The 9 most popular stories on VentureBeat in 2016

2016’s biggest technology stories span just about every category, from politics and media to security, transportation, and health — from Facebook and Twitter’s role in the U.S. election and Apple’s high-profile brawl with the FBI to Samsung’s exploding phones and Theranos’ exploding reputation.

There’s also Yahoo’s record-breaking hacks, the rise of autonomous cars, and the brief, wonderful moment we all indulged in the drug that is Pokémon Go.

But our readers have unwittingly picked their own favorite technology stories on VB. Here’s a shortlist of our most popular posts published in the year 2016, as determined by your taps and clicks.

KickassTorrents

While the recording and motion picture industries wage a perpetual holy war on file-sharing services, news of torrent directory KickassTorrents‘ mysterious downtime dominated our traffic this year as it outgrew the Pirate Bay.

Pokémon Go

To say 2016 was a big year for Pokémon is putting it mildly. The $45 billion franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary and Niantic released Pokémon Go. The smartphone app, with its distinctly lightweight augmented reality gameplay, attracted so much attention that Niantic’s servers crashed repeatedly.

Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge

To my surprise, Samsung’s exploding Note 7 smartphone didn’t top our list of most-read stories. Instead we have Evan Blass’ Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge scoop from January, where he revealed the smartphones in detail for the first time.

Amazon Go

Another surprise: Amazon’s brick-and-mortar grocery store with no checkouts made it on our list with just three weeks to spare. Yes, it was yet another year-end marketing ploy from Amazon, but Amazon Go may have some substance to it. The company says it will open its first “Amazon Go” store early next year.

Minecraft, Overwatch, and …

Above: Minecraft keeps strolling along.

Image Credit: Mojang

In 2016, Minecraft and Overwatch became incredibly popular search queries on pornography site PornHub. Confused? Well, I’ll defer to Jeffery Grub’s explainer.

Google and Urban Engines

Urban Engines was founded to make the real world as easy to navigate “as our web world.” Two years later, Google bought it. The startup joined Google’s maps team in September to “help organizations better understand how the world moves.”

A robot solves a Rubik’s Cube in 1 second

I’ll just leave this right here.

Domino’s pizza bot

Chatbot technology has a lot of growing up to do, but this year we saw a huge surge of interest in niche, single-purpose bots. Domino’s pizza-ordering bot topped our list, and it makes pretty good sense, as ordering pizza is generally a good idea — but do we have to get Domino’s?

The Pixel

Google hasn’t had a lot of luck with hardware. Aside from a few wins (Chromebooks and Chromecasts), the company is still pondering its strategy. Google’s new Pixel phones, however, pack plenty of promise. They’re the first devices to ever carry the “by Google” tagline … even though they’re actually made by HTC. This year, VentureBeat’s Emil Protalinski and Jordan Novet called the Pixel XL “the best Android phone money can buy.” There’s just one problem: “the Pixel perfectly presents Google’s messaging app disaster,” writes Protalinski. His critique is worth a read.