Tech History Dates Quiz

52 questions in this set · Free, no sign-up · Updated August 27, 2026

Almost everyone gets these wrong in the same direction. The companies feel older than they are and the products feel newer, and there is a reason for both.

The systematic error

Technology dates are the only category in this game where nearly everybody is wrong in a predictable direction, which makes them unusually learnable once you know what the bias is.

People consistently date company foundings too late and product launches too early. Google was founded in 1998, not in the mid 2000s when most people first heard of it. Amazon was founded in 1994, before most of its eventual customers had used the web at all. Netflix was founded in 1997, more than a decade before it streamed anything. Meanwhile the iPhone feels like it has been around since the early 2000s and was in fact announced and released in 2007, and the iPad, which feels almost contemporaneous with it, did not arrive until 2010.

The explanation for both halves is the same: you date a company from when it entered your life, not from when it started, and the gap between the two is usually five to ten years. Correcting for that single bias is worth several points a round.

The cluster that decides the set

That table is most of the difficulty in this set and also most of the solution. The foundings bunch into four short waves, and if you can place a company in the right wave you have usually eliminated two options. The waves are not arbitrary either: they track the arrival of cheap web hosting, then of the smartphone, then of the app store.

The long tail nobody expects

The set does not begin in the internet era. IBM was founded in 1911, ARPANET was created in 1969, the first email was sent in 1971, and Microsoft and Apple arrived in 1975 and 1976. Concorde began commercial supersonic passenger service in 1976, and the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, the same year Amazon was founded, which is a juxtaposition worth sitting with for a moment.

Those early entries are the easiest points in the set, because the options are decades apart rather than years apart. The moment a question lands after about 1994, the options tighten to two-year gaps and the reasoning has to get sharper.

The recent end

The set runs to 2022, which covers ChatGPT's launch and the Twitter acquisition. Very recent questions have their own trap: events from the last few years feel more recent than they are, because they have not yet been separated from the present by anything memorable. If you are unsure about something that feels like it happened last year, it is usually worth taking the earlier option.

If you want the neighbouring sets, science and discovery runs from 1543 to 2021 and history from 1492 to 2022.

Frequently asked questions

When was Google founded?

1998. Most people place it several years later, because they date a company from when it entered their own life rather than from when it started, a gap that is usually five to ten years.

Why are technology dates so hard to guess?

Because the bias is systematic. People date company foundings too late and product launches too early. Correcting for that one tendency is worth several points a round.

What is the difference between founded, launched and acquired?

Three different events with three different years, and this set contains all three. Netflix was founded in 1997 and launched streaming in 2007. YouTube was founded in 2005 and acquired in 2006. Read the verb in the question.

How far back does this set go?

To 1911, with the founding of IBM. The most recent questions are from 2022.

More Guess the Year sets

• History73 events from Columbus to the invasion of Ukraine, and how to build the timeline that makes them guessable.
• Science and space37 dates from Copernicus to the James Webb telescope, with the two centuries that changed the pace.

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