After search (and the massive ad business attached to it), what do you think Google’s most important product is? There are multiple potential candidates like Chrome and Maps, but my money’s on Android. The 10th major version of Google’s mobile operating service just arrived a few weeks ago, as it now does every fall. And tomorrow, September 23rd, is the 11th anniversary of Android’s official release alongside the announcement of the HTC Dream, the first phone running Android.

As just about anyone reading this site knows, Android was Google’s vision for the modern smartphone, released a little over a year after Apple stormed the industry with the iPhone. Through more than a decade, both operating systems have changed radically — but in typical Google fashion, Android felt at launch more like a beta test than anything that was truly consumer ready. “While there’s plenty to praise in this phone,” we wrote in our review way back in October of 2008, “there’s a lot more that’s missing — and some of those missing elements are what we consider to be core components of a device in the G1’s class.”

But Android also did a lot well, right out of the gate. From the start, logging in with your Google account synced to your phone all the important information you might need. It took Apple years to come up with a system that seamless — iOS 5 finally ushered in computer-free sign-in and setup in the fall of 2011. If you used Google Calendar, Contacts and Gmail, it would all be right there, no hassle required. Of course, in the case of contacts, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, because Gmail’s contact system was an absolute mess that took years to unravel. Such was life in those early days of the smartphone revolution.

Another place Android shone from day one was notifications. We may take the pull-down notification shade for granted now, but Android had it from day one. It was a far better solution than what you’d find on Windows Mobile, BlackBerry or the iPhone, and Apple decided to essentially copy it outright in 2011. Microsoft also put its own take on the Android notification shade into Windows Phone, but it was too little too late for that platform by then.

It would be another year before Android really became friendly to more than just Google enthusiasts, though. 2009 saw the simultaneous release of Android 2.0 and the Motorola DROID on Verizon, the biggest carrier in the US. (Disclosure: Verizon became Engadget’s parent company in 2015.) The hardware was a huge step forward from the G1, while software updates like support for multiple email accounts, an improved browser, a revamped contact system and a host of UI improvements all made Android easier and more pleasant to use.

It’s been just over five years since Apple killed off the iPod Classic (henceforth known as the iPod, because it is the One True iPod). Its death on September 9th, 2014 was no big surprise: Sales had been declining for years as the iPhone surpassed it in sales and feature set. Indeed, the notion of loading files from a computer onto a spinning hard drive to listen to music was totally anachronistic by 2014. Apple Music hadn’t arrived yet, but Spotify was quickly becoming the most important way to listen to music. Since we were all carrying smartphones, having another device for music just didn’t make sense anymore.

In retrospect, though, I sometimes miss the iPod. Over the last five years, smartphones have taken on a predictable form. Screens are bigger, networks are (marginally) faster, cameras are better, but all in all, we know what we’re getting with a handset. However, our relationship with smartphones is far more fraught than it was in 2014. We’re overloaded with notifications telling us about the horrible state of the world, networks like Twitter and Facebook are minefields of abuse, subscriptions and microtransactions suck more money out of wallets — and yet we can’t put our phones down.

Against the backdrop of smartphone addiction, the iPod suddenly seems appealing. Its tiny, 2.5-inch screen contained a UI meant to help you skim through thousands of songs quickly and easily; there was very little to distract you from your music. A device that felt so futuristic when it came out now feels positively retro. It’s full of buttons! You have to copy files from your computer to use it! There’s no internet connection!

Of course, those aren’t bugs but features to a small but substantial group of music lovers. You can find a whole variety of iPods for sale on eBay, not surprising considering how popular they were, but it’s still an impressive secondary market. There’s also a healthy mod community that’ll help interested hackers put a larger, more modern SSD drive and new battery into that old iPod case. If you’re the kind of person with a carefully-curated MP3 library built up over the last two decades, or someone who still buys CDs and rips them to a computer, you’re probably the kind of person who pines for an iPod.

There have always been big differences between Microsoft and Apple, but perhaps the most stark was that Apple made its own computers. Microsoft didn’t. You could buy a Windows PC from dozens of companies, but not Microsoft — something that led Apple to tout its tight system of hardware and software designed to work together. For years, though, it seemed inevitable that Microsoft would make its own Windows hardware, and on June 18th, 2012 the company showed off the original Surface line.

The Surface and Surface Pro both clearly took inspiration from the iPad, which was booming in popularity at the time, but Microsoft put its own spin on tablets. First and foremost, both devices were announced alongside keyboard cover accessories, making them far more suited than the iPad for getting “real work” done. iPads had keyboard support from day one, but the Surface and Windows were far more suited to keyboard-and-mouse control than touch back in 2012.

But the Surface was one of the first times we saw a tablet made alongside a detachable keyboard accessory. The concept was simple: Use this with the keyboard to blast through Excel sheets and Powerpoint presentations, and then take off the keyboard for a touch-centric tablet appearance. But as is so often the case, the devil was in the details — and the first Surface devices didn’t exactly get those details right.

The first Surface went on sale in October, and there were some immediately obvious issues. From a hardware perspective, the first Surface’s non-adjustable kickstand, relatively low-resolution screen and its awkward 16:9 aspect ratio (which made it all but unusable as a tablet in portrait mode) were hard to overcome. But perhaps more damning was the device’s Windows RT software, which only let you install apps from the Windows Store. Sure, it ran full versions of Microsoft Office, but beyond that the software ecosystem was severely limited. This all made the Surface a bit of a tough sell: It wasn’t better as a tablet than an iPad, and it was more limited than other Windows-powered laptops.

The Surface Pro, which didn’t arrive until February of 2013, came with its own set of issues. On the plus side, it had a far nicer screen than the standard surface, and supported the new Surface Pen accessory. It was also more powerful and ran a full version of Windows 8, which supported the vast array of software that was available for Microsoft’s main OS, even if it wasn’t optimized for touch. But the Surface Pro was simply too big and heavy to be useful as a tablet; battery life was a lot worse than the standard Surface; and it wasn’t the most convenient device to use in your lap because of that kickstand. As such, it was hard to recommend over traditional laptops, particularly when it cost more than $1,000 with a keyboard case.

While Microsoft didn’t get the details all right on its first try, the company did do a good job at relentless iteration and improvement in the following years. It wasn’t long before Microsoft gave up on having a lower-power, limited capability Surface model and put all its efforts behind the Pro, a move that paid off big by 2014. The Surface Pro 3 stepped up to a larger screen but managed to cut down the thickness and weight, while an improved multi-stage kickstand made it more comfortable to use. The Surface Pen got more and more capable, battery life improved, Microsoft ditched the awkward 16:9 display ratio, and by 2015, when the Surface Pro 4 launched, Microsoft was finally delivering on the vision it first presented years earlier.

For humans of a certain age, there are video games that everyone knows. Think: Pac-Man or the first Super Mario Bros. But it’s possible to argue that Tetris, which turns 35 on June 4th, is the most well-known game of all. If sales is your metric of choice, Tetris has sold more than 170 million copies across basically every gaming and computer platform you can imagine. According to some lists, only the constantly-evolving juggernaut Minecraft has sold more.

Of course, you can’t discuss the legacy of Tetris without also discussing Nintendo’s world-beating Game Boy console. Technically, Tetris had been around for five years before it was packaged in with every Game Boy sold — but the console’s immense popularity meant that the game became a sensation almost overnight.

Picking Tetris as the Game Boy launch title was an inspired choice. For a device meant to be played in short bursts, Tetris let gamers pick up their Game Boy, crush some lines and put the game down, only to jump back in later. It’s the kind of game you can play for hours at a time, but it doesn’t lose anything if you play for only 10 minutes. Contrast that with Super Mario Land (another Game boy launch title), a game that has levels to beat and a clear start and end point. Even though it’s a short game, it requires a bit more time to see it through to the end. And with no ability to save your game, players would have to start from scratch every time.

But it doesn’t matter if you start fresh with Tetris because you’re competing against yourself, trying to clear more lines or get a higher score than ever before. That formula was irresistible to kids and parents alike. Henk Rogers, who now runs the Tetris Company and first discovered the game at CES in 1988, said it all when pitching Nintendo on his idea to launch the Game Boy with Tetris included: “If you want to sell Game Boy to little boys, then pack in Mario. But if you want to sell Game Boy to everyone, pack in Tetris.”

Tetris may have achieved legendary status in large part thanks to the Game Boy, but the game was available on computers and in the arcade for years before the Game Boy even existed. It was created by Russian computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov with his friends Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov and ended up being the first computer game from Russia to be released in the West, in 1986. Pajitnov took inspiration from the five-block pentomino puzzle toys he played with as a child, settling on the now-familiar tetriminos in his game design.

The Assistant has also been one of Google’s best-supported products from both a hardware and software perspective. There are now multiple smart speakers and smart displays that can run the Assistant (that’s from both Google and third-party hardware makers) and it also runs on basically any Android or iOS device. Google has added its features into more of its apps, like Google Maps, and it works with Android Auto, Android TV and Wear OS devices too. At this point, the Assistant can be found on almost any hardware you can think of.

It would take far too long to run down the many new tricks it has gained in the last few years, but suffice to say that Google’s always adding more capability. One of the more impressive newer features is interpreter mode, which lets the Assistant serve as the middle-man between two people speaking in different languages. There’s also the creepy-but-intriguing Google Duplex feature, which lets the Assistant call a restaurant and book a table for you. It can also automatically check you into a flight, give you personalized recipe recommendations. Hell, it can even start up your Instant Pot.

That’s without mentioning the improvements Google announced a few weeks ago at its I/O developer conference. Among those are a much faster Assistant that takes up less space on your phone, a boon for lower-end devices. It’ll also be more personalized than ever, an appropriate update given that the company originally pitched the Assistant as “your own personal Google.”

Of course, one can’t mention the Google Assistant without acknowledging that it requires you to give up even more of your personal information to Google. As people finally start to push back and desire more privacy, Google’s making it easier to manage the vast trove of information it has about you. But even with privacy concerns being top of mind, don’t expect Google to pull back on prioritizing the Assistant. In just a few short years, it’s become one of the company’s defining products. If you’re still not convinced, just recall the enormous showcase the company has built in the parking lot of CES the last two years. It’s all about the Assistant, and Google doesn’t want you to forget it.

It’s hard to believe that only two years have passed since Microsoft first announced the Surface Laptop. That’s probably because the company had already built up a reputation with the Surface line of convertible tablets. Those computers tried to marry the portability and touch-screen convenience of the iPad with accessories, software and specs that made it more of a “real computer.”

It took Microsoft a few years to hone in on what exactly made the standard Surface work, but by 2015 it had really nailed the concept with the Surface Pro 4. But still, there were plenty of people who longed to see what Microsoft could do if it applied its burgeoning hardware chops to a more traditional laptop design. Enter the Surface Laptop, a computer with no fancy hinges or detachable keyboard; its most notable design quirk was the fabric-covered keyboard palm rests. But people who loved the design prowess Microsoft showed off with the Surface Pro but wanted a package that sat better on the lap were delighted.

And with good reason: The Surface Laptop quickly became one of the best all-around notebook computers, a device that hit right in the intersection of style, capability and price. It was basically a more modern MacBook Air that ran Windows, a device that had lots of people interested.

Of course, the Surface Laptop didn’t launch without a slight controversy — but it was about software, not hardware. You may or may not recall that Microsoft briefly dabbled with a Windows 10 variant called Windows 10 S. It was a slightly more locked-down version of Windows 10 that only allowed app installs from the Windows Store and only let users browse the web with Microsoft Edge. To some extent, it was meant to be a competitor to Chrome OS, which had found great success in the education market by 2017.

But consumers seemed more willing to accept the limitations of Chrome OS given how much inexpensive Chrome hardware was available. The Surface Laptop, on the other hand, started at $999, making it a harder sell for education-focused buyers. Initially, Microsoft offered free upgrades to Windows 10 Pro, but said it would charge $50 for upgrades starting in 2018.

Fortunately, Microsoft quickly realized the error of its ways and started shipping the Surface Laptop with the full Windows 10 Pro experience, The company still offers a streamlined “S” mode for Windows, but for the most part Windows 10 S is a blip in Microsoft’s long and winding operating system history.

That’s good news, because there’s almost nothing else to complain about with the Surface Laptop, which was upgraded last fall. Sure, it could use a USB-C port for charging and connectivity, but that’s basically one quibble. There are other laptops that are cheaper, or thinner and lighters, or more powerful. But it’s not often we come across a computer that truly checks all the boxes for almost anyone who might be considering it.

But that’s OK! It was a totally new piece of hardware, and it took time before owners figured out what it was best for. And by the time Apple launched the Watch Series 2 in September 2016, it was clear: This was a device for health and fitness first and foremost. Secondly, it was positioned as a device for quick communication and keeping up with your notifications without having to get your phone. That focus helped Apple build a more compelling story around the Watch, and it started to take off in a way the first one didn’t.

Apple also spent a lot of time targeting the first Apple Watch on the luxury market, even more so than it does with its other products. Indeed, there’s no mistaking a 18-karat gold, $10,000 Apple Watch as anything but an attempt to get credibility from serious timepiece collectors and aficionados — the sort of people who usually spend $10,000 on a Rolex, not a gadget.

But that strategy makes little sense with a device that’ll be outdated within a few years, and Apple quickly gave up on that extreme high end of the market. The company still makes stainless steel watches and has a partnership with the luxury retailer Hermès, which makes expensive leather straps for the Watch. But for the most part, the less expensive aluminum watches are what you’ll see on people’s wrists.

These days, you’ll see plenty of them on people’s wrists. While Android Wear (now Wear OS) never quite caught on, the Apple Watch’s popularity has continued to grow. At this point, it’s a polished, refined product that’s fast and reliable, if not something that’s essential as a smartphone for most people. But like most Apple products, it definitely has a devoted following — something that seemed far from a certainty when the first Apple Watch hit stores four years ago.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPad in January of 2010, but April 3rd was the first day normal people could get their hands on a device that represented Apple’s vision for the future of computing. That sounds like a seriously high-minded goal for a device that many derisively referred to as a “giant iPod touch” when it was announced, but Jobs pulled no punches in that first presentation. He called the iPad “our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device,” and ever since Apple has referred to the device with reverence — even if it hasn’t quite been the revolution Jobs predicted.

In some ways, it’s impressive how consistent Apple’s vision for the iPad has been since it arrived nine years ago. If you went back in time to 2010 and handed someone who just walked out of a store with a brand-new iPad (like the just-released iPad Air), they’d immediately understand the device. At its most basic, it’s still an all-screen device that’s of a similar size and weight that adapts its interface to whatever app you happen to be using.

Of course, the iPad has also undergone significant changes since 2010. And that’s a good thing because the original iPad was a classic first-generation Apple product: compelling, but flawed. For one thing, it was rather underpowered. The single-core A4 chip was paired with only 256MB of RAM, specs that meant that iOS 5 (released in late 2011) was the last software update it received. In a world where most iPhones and future iPads received software updates for years, this was a real shame for early adopters.

The hardware design, while exuding typical Apple polish, was also significantly improved upon just one year later with the iPad 2. The original iPad weighed in at over 1.5 pounds, making it a bit heavy to hold for longer sessions. The iPad 2 cut the weight and thickness noticeably while adding Apple’s handy smart cover to keep the screen clean. It also had a dual-core A5 chip and double the RAM, enough power that Apple kept the iPad 2 on sale for three years and kept giving it software updates until 2016. The company even added cameras, making the iPad the obvious video-chatting tool was meant to be.

The Rift’s launch capped a whirlwind three years that started with the release of the first Rift developer kit, which also came out in March — March 29th, 2013, to be precise. The first Rift developer kit came out as a Kickstarter project the company launched in August of 2012. Oculus raised well over $2 million on that Kickstarter and started showing the Rift off to the press at CES in 2013, where I had a chance to give it a shot. At the time, I called it an immersive, disorienting “shock to the system” that was unlike any tech I had tried before and was easily the highlight of CES for just about anyone there who tried it.

That buzz built over the next year or so, as development kits made their way out to an eager public. And the company didn’t slow down on the hardware front. Less than a year later (March 19th, 2014), a second-generation, developer-focused version of the Rift (known as DK2 or by its “Crystal Cove” codename) was on sale for $350.

But easily the biggest thing that happened to Oculus between the first developer kit and the full release of the Rift in 2016 was Facebook swooping in to purchase the company for a whopping $2 billion on March 25th, 2014. This for a company that hadn’t formally released a finalized product — and while VR was obviously of huge interest to both tech’s biggest companies and the public at large, it certainly was still an unproven medium. (Some might argue it still is, but that’s another story altogether.)

That transaction gave Oculus even more legitimacy and helped to truly kick some competition into high gear. After Facebook’s purchase, Google, Sony and HTC all got into the VR world, to varying degrees of success. You can also trace initiatives such as “mixed reality” headsets like Microsoft’s Hololens back to Oculus; even Apple’s slow but steady interest in augmented reality only became a reality in the years following the Facebook / Oculus partnership.

Oculus got another big boost later in 2014 when it partnered with Samsung, a union that eventually yielded the smartphone-powered Gear VR. The headset was more of an accessory for your Samsung phone rather than a full-fledged product, but it did do some important work of making VR a little more accessible for people to try ahead of the Rift’s eventual launch.

This was all just a lead-up to the final, consumer-ready Rift hardware that arrived in 2016. Sure, the headset cost $600 and required a relatively high-end gaming PC to use. But that didn’t stop our reviewer Devindra Hardawar from stating that the Oculus approach to VR “is indeed the real deal.” The hardware design and built quality was vastly improved over the early developer kits, it was easy to set up and it successfully pulled players into an immersive world with a high-quality, stable gaming experience. Obviously, those launch titles were hit-or-miss, but VR gaming had truly arrived.

Google announces Android Wear (March 18, 2014)

2014 was the year that both Google and Apple showed their smartwatch platforms to the world, and it all started with Android Wear (now rebranded as Wear OS). When first announced, Google did its best to present a clear vision of how Android on your wrist could be helpful. Android Wear was built around four major features: voice search, activity tracking, notifications and remote control of your phone.

Google mostly delivered on these promises. While “OK Google” didn’t summon the full-featured Google Assistant like it does now, the company’s speech recognition was impressive even back in 2014, and it was fairly reliable at pulling up details like your calendar appointments and the weather. And “Google Now” (which first launched on Android smartphones) tried to surface info “cards” relevant to you based on data in your email, calendar and other Google apps. Having that info available at a glance along with important notifications from your phone was a pretty handy feature.

Unfortunately, early Android Wear hardware was a decidedly mixed bag, with poor battery life hampering otherwise compelling devices like the Moto 360. And the first iteration of the smartwatch OS wasn’t exactly the most intuitive either: It often took so many swipes to find the info you were looking for that using a phone was often a better move. It also took a while before third-party developers started building quality Wear apps.

Five years on, Wear OS has improved. The UI is better thought-out, Google Assistant makes everything work a bit better, battery life is no longer an issue, there are way more features, and many Google’s hardware partnerships means there are many more watches to choose from. But despite these improvements, Wear OS smartwatches hold only a sliver of the market, trailing Apple, Samsung and Fitbit in the wearables game.

Twitter founded (March 21, 2006)

Far more people use Facebook than Twitter, but the blue bird’s importance in the social media landscape cannot be ignored. On the one hand, Twitter is a great resource for following breaking news, discussing cultural events in real time, finding excellent memes and generally keeping up with what’s happening around the world. On the other hand, it’s a platform that has been weaponized by some of the worst people of the internet, who use it to spread false information and engage in vicious harassment campaigns that target private individuals and public figures alike. Perhaps most damning, it took Twitter years to acknowledge the many problems that were obvious to its users. Indeed, Twitter is probably best known for its problems rather than its product.

It didn’t start out like this. Co-founder Jack Dorsey initially envisioned Twitter as an SMS-based service for sending short messages within a small group. The first tweet was sent via SMS by Dorsey on March 21st, 2006; it read “just setting up my twttr.” The lack of vowels in the tool’s name was intentional, a nod to other popular services like Flickr that dropped vowels from their names as well as the five-character limit on US SMS short codes that were used to send Twitter messages. While Twitter was initially used as an internal tool at the company where Dorsey first came up with the idea, it launched publicly in July of 2006 and was spun off as its own company the following year.

At first, the popular conception of Twitter was reminiscent of other social networks: It’s a place to tell people what you’re eating and share other pointless status updates. But before long, it gained a reputation as a platform for real-time communication around breaking news; celebrities and politicians also adopted the platform as a way to communicate directly with its growing user base. Of course, as the platform’s prominence and influence grew, so too did the number of bad actors abusing it. Harassment and Twitter’s role in the spread of false information — including in recent elections — remain huge issues. Even now, though, it’s not clear if the company is willing or able to take the steps necessary to address these problems.

For perhaps the most comprehensive look at how Twitter came to power, Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal is a must-read.

Friendster launched (March 22, 2002)

Of course, before Twitter there was Friendster. Launching years before Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and basically every other social networking site you think of now, Friendster laid the groundwork for what we think of in the early days of the social web. You could find your friends, post updates, share photos and messages, and do just about everything that MySpace enabled a few years later.

The site was created by Canadian computer programmer Jonathan Abrams and got its name by mashing up friend and Napster, the infamous music sharing service. And while the site racked up three million users in the span of months, Friendster got lapped by MySpace in April 2004 and the site never really recovered — though it did stick around for almost 15 years. Later in the decade, Friendster grew in Asia, and was eventually acquired by a massive Malaysian internet company, MOL Global, in December 2009. Believe it or not, the site tried to pivot into social gaming and entertainment in 2011. Those initiatives were shut down in 2015, and it officially disappeared as a company as of January 1st, 2019.

There are a host of reasons why Friendster didn’t maintain its lead in the social space, but many point to the company’s decision not to sell to Google in 2003 as a major misstep. Google was offering $30 million, and the company certainly could have increased the resources available to Friendster. Journalist Gary Rivlin noted in the New York Times in 2006 that a big part of Friendster’s problems were simply site performance: things took forever to load. When MySpace launched and worked better, that was the beginning of the end for Friendster — even though it hung on in one form or another for many years.

Images: Jason Doiy via Getty Images (Twitter); Cookes & Sangria (Friendster)