Inertia from people who don't know any better if I had to guess. There have been several sites that I used to frequent over the years that got acquired yet still had my attention for long after they should have because they were able to "boil the frog", which is to say insidiously reduce investment in content and degrade quality in an envelope such that I didn't notice how garbage it actually was until much later.
"The Hill" is perhaps the most recent example I can think of - they went from being a legitimate media outlet to a fire hose of hilariously-slanted editorials and pop sidebar schlock in just a few short years.
> According to the Times, Shah wants CNET because it’s a “well-known industry brand” and still has an audience that’s large enough to be attractive to tech advertisers.
Eight-year-old me used to trawl the CNet Downloads section for hours looking for video games to play (which were more often than not bizarre half-baked DOS RPGs and adventure games). Later on I religiously checked their MP3 player reviews to see whether I should sink my hard-saved cash into a Rio Carbon or the Creative Zen Micro that I eventually bought. It's unfortunate but not unexpected to see them relegated to the second tier of internet publishing decades later.
siamese_puff|1 year ago
alexjplant|1 year ago
"The Hill" is perhaps the most recent example I can think of - they went from being a legitimate media outlet to a fire hose of hilariously-slanted editorials and pop sidebar schlock in just a few short years.
neilv|1 year ago
Is it worth it for the SEO value?
Are they planning to make AI training deals for the corpus of older content?
Does the company own real estate, and/or is there an applicable debt-loading maneuver?
ot|1 year ago
> According to the Times, Shah wants CNET because it’s a “well-known industry brand” and still has an audience that’s large enough to be attractive to tech advertisers.
alexjplant|1 year ago
jeffwask|1 year ago
It's funny how badly pretty much every corporate acquisition of web publishing site has gone.
Yawrehto|1 year ago
ChrisArchitect|1 year ago
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41170032)
blackeyeblitzar|1 year ago
Dachande663|1 year ago