---
title: "Which came first, Android or Wikipedia?"
description: "Android vs Wikipedia: Wikipedia came first, by 7 years — 2001 against 2008. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/android-vs-wikipedia/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Android or Wikipedia?

**Which came first, Android or Wikipedia?: Wikipedia**

2001 — 7 years before Android

Wikipedia came first, by 7 years. Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia.

## Side by side

|  | Android | Wikipedia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2008 | 2001 |
| Date | 2008-09-23 | 2001-01-15 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The HTC Dream, the first Android phone, was announced. | Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia. |

## Android

Android as a company was founded in October 2003 — four years before the iPhone — originally to build an operating system for digital cameras. Google bought it in 2005 and the first Android phone shipped in October 2008, fifteen months after the iPhone went on sale. So Android is older than the iPhone as a project and younger as a product, which is why the question needs the distinction stated.

## Wikipedia

Wikipedia launched in January 2001 as a scratchpad for Nupedia, a peer-reviewed encyclopedia project started in 2000 that had produced about two dozen articles in a year. The wiki produced more than that in its first month and Nupedia was abandoned in 2003. Wikipedia is older than Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the iPhone.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Android or Wikipedia?

Wikipedia, by 7 years — 2001 against 2008.

### When did Android start?

2008. The HTC Dream, the first Android phone, was announced.

### When did Wikipedia start?

2001. Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]