Just a few months after its founder departed for Apple, AnandTech has been sold. The buyer is Purch, a growing "digital content and services company" that acquired Tom's Hardware last year. Here's a snippet from the official press release:
NEW YORK, NY (December 17, 2014) – Purch today announced the acquisition of Anandtech.com, a leader in mobile, computing and IT analysis and reviews. Purch’s industry-leading combination of high-quality content and integrated commerce experiences makes complex buying decisions easy for more than 100 million consumers and professionals monthly. With the acquisition of AnandTech, Purch furthers its mission to simplify purchase decisions for in-market tech consumers by adding one of the most popular computer components, hardware, and mobile reviews sites to a brand portfolio that already includes category heavyweight, Tom’s Hardware.
The release goes on to quote the boy wonder himself. Anand says he's "happy to see [AnandTech] end up with a partner committed to taking good care of the brand and its readers."
Scott, don’t sell us out too!
Anything but this! I just came to the realization that everything good must come to an end, except TR. If you get too old for this, don’t sell TR! Pass the mantle to some other passionate geeky enthusiast with an army of gerbils behind supporting him!
Long live TR!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, I’ll give you $10,000,000 in cash now!
TR’s new business model: Cover more posts of tech news sites getting bought, it clearly drives up subscriptions! ;-P
Purch is probably Scott’s shell corporation.
Now you know where all the donations moneys are being spent. Anandtech ain’t cheap. Just ask AMD.
Purch seems to be making good ad revenue and whatever else comes with it with these sites. Doesnt surprise me that they want to grow bigger. the problem with bigger is that better can take a downturn in quality content.
This has me worried about their site layout. Tom’s is all ads and little content.
Well this is not surprising. I was one of the first folks to read his articles as he posted them from home (his parents house) when he was in high school. I say it doesn’t surprise me because the tech environment is evolving and even the enthusiast component, while not waning, is changing too since he started.
Tech is becoming a disposable commodity. With leveraged (subsidized) phones being a $1 and intentionally being obsoleted in two years, even the poorest of us can “afford” technology that was pie in the sky dreams of 10 years ago. (Yeah, I am accusing the phone and OS makers on purposely designing each to be counter effective and not sustainable.)
I dropped out of the AT forums for the most part, except to ask a question or two of the experts that still haunt there. What used to be a singular location for information has been replaced by more focused, specialized forums. What used to be membership in just AT, Ars and slashdot (yeah that site) has grown to AV forum (for my now networked audio/video household), kinja (for my non-technical informational sharing – io9, deadspin, gawker), consumerist (but now I am frequenting that less and less), techreport (replaced tom’s hardware after it became a free for all when it sold) and many others.
So yeah, Anand has grown up; the site and forum became too large to manage and go to college for him so he needed others at that time. Now, he is just the owner principal but not much in day to day operations. So basically once revered sites have now become fodder for label companies looking to scrape data and sell the aggregate. He wanted out completely and he still owned it, so yeah it got sold.
[b<]I won't be surprised if Purch turns all their acquisitions into a singular aggregate reseller site like Huffpost. (If not, then I just gave them their idea for profitability.)[/b<]
That is unfortunate.
TR and Ars forever! (however long “forever” is…)
My PC-building interest has waned (I remember when I couldn’t go 6 months without building or upgrading, but those days are past), so I don’t read the articles as much, but the forums here have so. much. knowledge. of all types of technology. I personally just got a crash course in the pitfalls of trying to buy a budget Android tablet (note to self: next tab will be an ipad), but in the same place I can get info on TV deals, Windows error messages, video game cheat codes, writing computer code, used car buying… and on and on, as Vonnegut would say.
It’s been a good 10 years as a TR member.
Anandtech gets bought by the clowns in charge of Tom’s, and now TechReport is moving on to phone reviews. Today is a bad day for PC enthusiasts D:
Not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but it’s been a bad 10 years or so for PC enthusiasts, and it’s only going to get worse.
Pretty much
The demand for more CPU and GPU power is falling more towards the prosumer crowd.
There’s no killer mainstream application that *needs* more power than what current quad-core chips can muster. Mainstream PC gaming and GPUs are going to be stuck at 2Megapixels gaming for a while.
[url<]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVXJmfd3cmg[/url<]
The only thing I found myself reading on Anandtech the past year or so was Dailytech so the sale isn’t too big of a deal to me.
Dailytech seems kind of screwed by the sale though. Maybe Purch didn’t like the no payola or receiving gifts ethics policy.
If you are talking about reviews to base purchase decisions on, Anandtech has become pretty much irrelevant since a long time ago; the only silver lining left after that is their entertaining in-depth technical analysis of hardware.
And my conjecture about why Anand left his own site for Apple is as a smart man he can clearly see that PC tech has become more and more stagnated and going getting worse in the past few years especially with decline of AMD while seeing that Apple with their own software/hardware integration is the way forward to sustain profit instead of commoditized PC/Android competitors fighting each other with just hardware specs.
I have been thinking of limiting Dell etc to the corporate market for a similar reason, at least for desktops.
Also, a bigass pile of cash for selling his site.
I need to save up the $100 it would take to buy DailyTech now so I can fire Jason Mick. That guy is a hack like none other. EDIT: Looks like the DT links on the Anandtech site have been removed.
And also, “lol” at Tom’s Hardware’s parent company buying Anandtech. Nail in the coffin there.
Stay real, Tech Report. You’re pretty much the only good one left. The case just got made (again) for the readership here to become paying customers.
– what are these things coming out of her nose?
– spaceballs.
– oh $#!+, there goes the planet.
so what does this mean for the bit of AT that was AMD Town?
does this mean Tom’s bought into that? Does Tom’s now have an AMD-section on the horizon or is the AMD section kaput?
At least this means the colours of the bars on the graphs for AMD stuff won’t be all freaky so as to be very difficult to understand correctly.
I like Tom’s. They do good, thorough articles sometimes, that aren’t afraid of detail. So I don’t really mind I guess. There are still plenty of top-calibre sites out there. Even more of them if you speak languages other than English.
It’s already gone. the big red “AMD center” button is missing from the menu.
Maybe I missed it but I didn’t see a story to it at anadtech. Also the big link to dailytech is gone.
It’s the top story on the main page. Maybe you missed it because it’s hiding in plain site, the article picture link is the Anandtech logo.
I did notice that dailytech link was missing now.
How can I get to my right-wing tech propaganda now?!? *sad*
THG is very slowly recovering from near-fatal damage caused by BestOfMedia’s buyout in 2007.
It seems that despite the rough history, THG has survived under Purch’s wing to this day, and I’d even go as far as saying that it’s an improvement (which isn’t much of a compliment given how bad it was under BestOfMedia’s initial reign.
Here’s hoping that Purch understands what seperates Anand from other sites and doesn’t just use it to link-bait and generate cross site traffic to THG!
They have improved, except for their seizure-inducing ads.
Ok guys, I’ve been reading the tech report for years, could be eight, or ten, who cares. Never bothered to post a comment, although the community here has created some outstanding threads (the recent fan roundup thread is a great example).
Guess what, just registered and donated some hard earned cash to keep this beautiful site going strong. So well, I guess, send a big thanks and wave goodbye to anandtech.
Your support is very much appreciated!
this may help explain the way Toms Hardware’s forums and admins that watch the forums have changed over the last year and a half. I haven’t posted or replied there in seven month’s or more. Total trash on that end.
Ryan Smith posted this:
[url<]http://anandtech.com/show/8790/anandtech-acquired-by-purch[/url<] [quote<]Before his departure, Anand spent almost a year meeting with all of the big names in the publishing space, both traditional and new media players. The goal was to find AnandTech a home with a partner that had a sustainable business model (similar to AnandTech’s), but could add the investment and existing reach to allow the site to better realize its potential. That search led to a number of interesting potential partners; it was a refreshing experience to say the least knowing that there are groups in the world who really value good content. Ultimately that search brought AnandTech to Purch.[/quote<] So Anand was trying to get out for a while. I'm sure this is why he left when he did.
His involvement had dropped for a while. He was probably just waiting to see how the rest of the team managed without his involvement before deciding to hand it over and move on.
Honestly, i can’t see what a site like Anand needs to improve it’s site that Purch can offer them, but it no doubt comes with a big fat pay cheque.
Anand no doubt had to divest himself of the company to go to Apple. What Purch could offer that Anandtech couldn’t on its own is the freedom to get out of the business.
Why would he need to fully leave AT to go to Apple? Time demands aside, I don’t know why it would be a requirement, other than Apple being very controlling. But it’s not as if AT and Apple compete.
They don’t compete, sure, but I have this feeling that they wanted his full attention.
I mean, I know which one I’d pick, and it’s not the publishing business.
first of all I think…….. doing the same thing over and over for years……… change is good. secondly, bet there’s a good paycheck in it.
The question wasn’t about why he would leave, but why Apple would force him to divest himself of AT. Hell, he could have stayed on as an absentee owner and just paid the staff like he was already.
I think Apple were afraid of the prospect of unbiased phone and tablet reviews.
And I’ve finally subscribed too- as much as I’d love you guys to retire filthy stinkin’ rich, I want to support the independents so they don’t sell out. It’s a conundrum I admit, but now you have some of my money.
I came here after Anand left too.
y’all are totally welcome here. 🙂
Thank you Anand & team for years of great, intelligent tech coverage. Another great site goes into the history books.
Ruh roh. I love Anandtech, and I used to love Tomshardware, but they started circling the toilet drain ever since their buyout. I hope Anandtech can retain their quality. Losing Anand was also a bag of hurt.
To be fair – maybe I’m needlessly corolating the buyout to the decline in quality. But they did closely match each other.
How is Purch generating revenue? They must be doing something right.
I suppose the next move should be collapsing these two website into a new, single company, that shall be named either:
1) Ana-Tom’s Hard
2)Tom’s-A Hard Tech
or
3)Tech Hard (this is actually prety cut3 !)
Any other suggestions?
Tom’s Hard 4 Anand
Tom’s Hard 4 Anand’s Wares
Tom’s Hard 4 Anand
/thread
Moved to R&P…
Tom’s Anandtech
AnandAndTomAreGoneTech
Any word on how much Anand was paid for this website? He did devote most of his adult life to it and I am glad he was able to “cash out”.
Who woulda thunked that Anand’s Hardware Tech Page would one day be so valuable. It seems like just yesterday I was reading his news posts about his high school finals…
oh that’s a pile of ballz
What about DailyTech–are they part of the deal as well? I haven’t found much of interest on Anandtech of late but Dailytech has been daily reading for me (after TechReport, of course).
Doesn’t seems to be part of it. In fact, the DailyTech sidebar has been removed, which many consider a good thing.
Well that sucks. Independent news… who needs that?
At least they haven’t bought TR, right guys? Right?
I’m still the sole owner of TR and Editor in Chief, and I’m still writing in-depth reviews. See my iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review, just published.
Folks can support us by subscribing here:
[url<]https://techreport.com/subscriptions.x[/url<] 🙂
Awesome. I used to primarily read Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware. These days it’s Anandtech and TR.
The one thing Anandtech has (had?) a leg up on you guys with is the regular and in depth phone reviews. If you start doing that, and then hearing about Anandtech’s possible demise via corporatization. I’m considering a subscription. I don’t subscribe to websites. Ever. So, that’s a big deal for me.
I also like your editors’ attitudes of community involvement. It’s nice. Thanks for being an independent and reliable source of tech news! I appreciate you guys despite my miserliness. I really do!
We’ll continue to appreciate you from our poverty!
OK… This conversation with the extremely friendly Editor in Chief convinced me to subscribe. I should get a silver dealy next to my name soon. I even went ahead and did auto-renew. Thanks!
Awesome. Thanks for the support!
well, this reminded me that I also wanted to subscribe but never had simultaneously enough money to spend and memory of the intent…untill now… btw your average subscription have risen quite high
(sorry for my english, it isn´t my primary language and I am drunk…)
Please, don’t drink and subscribe at any other site.
Congrutalions!
This conversation also reminded me I had been meaning to register and subscribe. (I admit to having the “gold or nothing” mentality) I’ve been reading for 8 years and it’s my favorite site. What perpetually keeps me coming back are the Scott W. articles that have humor and creativity mixed in. I feel like I have learned a lot about good writing just by reading his articles over the years. I signed up for a $50 auto-renew subscription. Yessssss!! This site definitely has my support even though I’m a certifiable scoundrel for waiting so long to do it.
Thanks for the support!
I hope I write for a smattering of us–the TR readership–when I pen this show of colours: Few are passionate enough about the highest reporting standards. The qualities we hold dear are thoroughness allied with forensic attention-to-detail.
We value contributors who are persistently meticulous, have deep-seated and incorruptible ethics; are well-rounded, tireless and are blessed with an abundance of maturity and plain old objectivity.
I trust you are –or are soon– nurturing potential successors to take the reins for when the faculties are failing. Don’t leave it too late. May standards not slip. The bar cannot be set too high. Sermon over. Amen. Roll-on 2015.
Now where did I put my drink….
Pretty sure you put that drink in your stomach. 🙂
I appreciate the sentiment, but uh, I’m not *that* old.
contingency planning can’t be a bad thing…
just don’t store any on Sony’s servers
well its after midnight here, so I feel justified in having a glug or two… that plus its freakin’ cold…
One of the things on Anandtech I enjoy a lot are the server articles by Johan de Gelas – the recent overview of (future) ARM servers was a fun read. Since I upgrade less and less, I’ve gravitated towards “state of the industry” articles and opinion pieces. I’m still waiting for a NY Times of tech, though. 🙂
I just tried to subscribe, but got stuck with a “please wait…”
I’ll try again later…
—
edit — I tried again later, and it worked — I’m now a subscriber 🙂
I still can’t get my head around TR doing a full iphone review. It’s a brave new world of rounded corners. But i get why you did it (it’s got some interesting [i<]tech[/i<] to [i<]report[/i<] on and nothing brings in page views like a lower case i).
iReport?
It better stay that way Scott. Don’t even think otherwise. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Don’t forget about your biannual polls!
I think you’ve set a new upvote record!
If anyone wants a subscription to TR but can’t afford it, hit me up (rys@beyond3d.com) and I’ll buy one for everyone who asks until I can’t afford it myself (assuming there’s a way for me to do that. Scott, can you gift subscriptions to people?)
Merry Christmas <3
Doh, we haven’t built a gifting option yet. It’s on our list, but behind a few other things.
Gold! Yay!
keep the good stuff comin’!
Thanks for subscribing!
Every good thing must end.
RIP Anandtech.
I’m enjoying it while it’s alive. Another great article by Johan De Gelas has just arrived. If he’s banned from AT (or AT is banned by him) then I hope he finds refuge here at TR.
RIP Anandtech
If TR needs needs another round of memberships I’d be happy to contribute again. I like thinking of TR as a community funded organization (kind of like NPR). Infact, maybe in your next year membership drive you could take a page from their playbook and do some kind of a raffle to go along with the existing donor levels.
Anandtech was the first news site I’d go to when doing my daily roundup. Tom’s was second, but there was a noticeable decline in quality at some point that was frustrating enough for me to stop visiting it. It might have been around the buyout, I can’t remember. I don’t want to falsely correlate the two together. They’re still alright for product reviews, but I only go there to check up on benchmark numbers now, not day to day news. I’m afraid of the same phenomenon happening with Anandtech. That doesn’t leave me much for technology related news (pretty much Tech Report and Techpowerup for hardware, and Slashdot for general). Are there any other sites you could recommend me to start including in my daily news ritual?
Tom’s went downhill over a decade ago when it was first sold.
Looks like it was bought by Bestofmedia back in 2007.
I’m talking about when Tom Pabst, the founder, sold it. #OldSkoolInternet
I know, I am trying to figure out the details so that we can compare.
They have had some excellent articles lately on PSUs and power consumption of various bits’n’pieces in a PC. They were translated from their German site, which is a serious propeller hat PC geek site. I’m not saying it recovered to what it once was, but it’s worth a visit every other week for some gems.
Mine was VoodooExtreme with Billy the “Gamer” Wilson…seems like so long ago. 🙁
Wow, that brings back memories. I haven’t thought of that site in years.
I think about it sometimes when pieces of the old site pop up in some rudimentary way over at IGN where it wound up.
Sad to know that Anandtech will go the same way in due course now…
Like Sharky Extreme…
Oh Man…Sharky was one of the first sites I ever started to follow. What did happen to them?
Sharky! I’d forgotten them. What happened?
I also remember Redwoods site. Mainly for gaming but it was my go-to at the time. I think he quit his job to work full time on the site *just* as the bubble burst around 2000 and it all fell through. Felt bad for him 😐
I used to go to Voodoo Extreme and Sharky’s almost every day. Once they sold it (or maybe some time shortly before ) it really started to go downhill and I quit visiting the site.
Billy “Wicked” Wilson:
[url<]https://techreport.com/news/8098/billy-quot-wicked-quot-wilson-rip[/url<] I had a blah blah blah in the "Ask Steed" mailbag, was happy about that. Remember Paul Steed? [url<]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Steed[/url<]
Wow. I didn’t know Wicked had died. What a shame. Paul Steed, too.
I remember when VE3d switched to IGN-like design. I was like, “Yeah… No.”
And I was gone.
Ah, I remember the infamous threads about Derek Smart over at Voodoo Extreme. He’d show up and all hell would break loose…
I remember VE and SharkyExtreme well, also went to the Firingsquad.com a lot too, miss their reviews.
Ars is still in pretty good shape if you can handle the Apple love
And the occasional hack…
I pretty much stopped visiting there when they sold to Conde Nast.
And the Wired and Wired UK articles posted as their content, and the editors getting all angsty at negative commentary when they turned on their own by posting an article about Snowden who was active in their forums back in the day. Not like a real article, just a fluff piece that picked apart stuff he was commenting on in the forums. “Oh, see here, he liked the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Now give us more page hits!”
It feels like the content I and feel of the site is eroding. There’s still enough tech and science stuff to keep me there but the website redesigns and the staff’s poor reception of criticism (not flames, actual constructive criticism) has really turned me off. And I frequented Ars back in the day when Ace’s Hardware was still going strong.
Don’t laugh but I’ve found Wired to be pretty good for more in-depth articles about companies, new products, and important individuals in the tech industry. You just need to filter a little.
Wired had a lot of problems trying to be hip and coming of as pretentious during much of its existence but the last years they’ve gotten better. They don’t do in-depth tech reviews though.
Toms is pretty good on daily news these days, and they’ve definitely improved their other content. They did some great articles recently on PSUs.
Anandtech, on the other hand, got too caught up with mobile and SSDs, and the content is sparce.
From my feeds:
eTeknix, Guru3D, KitGuru, techPowerUP for daily news and some reviews. (There are more then that, but those are very good IMO)
Hardware Canucks is good for reviews too.
Could Anand’s departure be partly due to this? Was Anand planning to sell his site all along?
This is really weird. I was under the impression (maybe without warrant) that when he “retired” that meant he gave up the business. This is probably an acquisition that was in place or at least in process when he left.
So in other news what’s Anand doing at apple? Wonder what his compensation is?
ALL OF IT.
Hey, I know–let’s all text him on his yacht (or private plane) and ask him!
I would *love* to know what he’s doing at Apple, but I doubt we’ll know anytime soon.
Here are a couple of guesses:
1. Help Apple PR better interact with the tech-nerd press and broader community
2. Help with internal efforts to benchmark SOC designs — selecting or developing benchmarks to help make sure that Apple is improving their SOCs in ways that are relevant to users
3. both #1 and #2
If he has a choice it’s probably #1 and #2. For now there’s probably a focus on #2 as it helps him and Apple get comfortable with each other but when the next big Apple event comes up I expect Anand will show up.
THG is not afraid to criticize so maybe AT gains some objectivity. Maybe they pay more attention to the news section too.
I do hope the 2 won’t coordinate the testing methodology or share content since then we get less.
weeeeeeeee
So what’s going to stop Tom’s and Anand’s websites from cannibalizing each others’ traffic?
It doesn’t matter. Certainly not to the owners. That’s why a single person or family will have Toyota and Ford and Chevy dealers all next to each other. It doesn’t matter which brand the customer wants, the owner wins.
Prepping for their IPO:
[url<]http://www.adweek.com/news/press/purch-mulling-ipo-157644[/url<] "I would consider the IPO as one possible path, amongst other paths, in the next 12 to 24 months," Purch CEO Greg Mason told Adweek
You wrote “prepping”, but “considering” seems more appropriate.
They’re talking about it in public. Most definitely beyond considering and into prepping.
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…stranger’s hand
In a…desperate land
Lost in a Roman…wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
There’s danger on the edge of town
Ride the King’s highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake…he’s old, and his skin is cold
The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we’ll do the rest
The blue bus is callin’ us
The blue bus is callin’ us
Driver, where you taken’ us
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and…then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door…and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother…I want to…fuck you
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin’ a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin’ a blue rock
C’mon, yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end
[OK, anyone who downthumbs the freakin’ Doors is in need of both a banhammer and a smack upside the head with a clue-by-four.]
I love the smell of reviews in the morning.
LOL. Made me laugh. I love the smell of napalm in hardware.
I love the smell of the magic hardware smoke in the morning.
[url<]http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/robzombie/dragula.html[/url<] Replace 'dragula' with 'chuckula'
tl;dr
Nice. True, but nice.
There’s not much to read on AnandTech now anyhow, there wasn’t even a passing mention of the recent AMD Omega drivers.
But….but….AMD Zone?
What happened to that AMD sponsored portal?
It’s called semiaccurate.
He said sponsored, not fully owned. =)
My bad then 🙂
Hard to say, one day it just wasn’t there anymore. What I do know is that there is a Intel tab. Hmmm
Edit: Just popped over there, and AMDs tab is back, but given the same weight as the others. No special treatment any more, and that’s fine by me.
No love for the in-depth SSD technology and SSD reviews?
Ian, I think, commented: the flu is to blame. 🙁
You can always resort to AMD’s propaganda site, semiaccurate, for news about anything AMD. 8 out of 10 news there are about AMD.
But don’t they wall most of their articles off now so you can’t tell that’s the case until you pay?
It was a good run while it lasted. I had my doubts once Anand left but this is the final nail in the coffin given how Tom’s has gone.
Agree, I gave up on Tom’s years ago.
What’s wrong with tomshardware? I haven’t been there recently because of the slideshows, but the content still seem fine.
Have you tried going there without adblock? RIP in peace.
I can usually get higher quality content from Anandtech and especially TR.
Well, since I use adblock, the answer is no so now all websites will be the same in regard to the number of ads.
Gee, thanks. It’s not like us and the other sites need the ad money to keep their lights on or something.
I don’t mind keeping adblock off if the site is still useable (TR, Ars Technica, reddit). But Tom’s isn’t navigable with all that cruft.
This only applies to a subset of people who are technical enough to install adblock (easy), technical enough to change default settings of installed applications (moderate), and people who really want to support the websites they read (rare).
Websites sort of forced my hand when many of them started having autoplaying video ads. Those will really hurt the web ad business because as we all know, most people keep the defaults of anything and that includes adblock.
The “OMG we need the ad money, uninstall your adblock and noscript!!!” has been around a long time.
Ads could have worked but some people had to go a wreck everything. Now ads can compromise your machine.
The most a web site that wanted you to view their ads and then compromised your machine will give you is “Oops, sorry our ad provider started serving up 0 days, so we gave your machine to the RBN, please keep viewing our ads! Not our fault!”
Ads with noise, ads the pop in front or behind, ads that spawn new ads when closed, ads running 0 day java sploits, 10K popups, epilepsy inducing ads, etc. Blech!
Ad people got greedy and then completely unethical. Trusting my machine to people who have shown they have less ethics than a rabid mink is just plain stupid.
Besides, ad views pay close to 0 as I understand (clicks pay more). I suspect TR makes WAY WAY more money when I build each new system using their guide and their links to Newegg than they would from years of their ads loading on each screen. So rather than just taking the TR advice and then shopping the web for the lowest price on each component, I have been buying straight from the guide links so long, I do not even know if Pricewatch still exists.
The only fact that matters is that websites depend on their advertisement revenue (in various forms) to survive. Cut that off, and they die, whether it’s TR, CNN, or whatever.
Technical issues will be technical issues, ads or no ads. And I dislike intrusive advertising as much as anyone, but that’s not the point here.
The point is that people can rage against ads all they want, but the bottom line is if everyone blocks them, then there will be no content, period, full stop (and the quality of it will just decrease further and further). Nobody will be paid to produce it, and it won’t exist. For reference, see the demise of a lot of tech websites.
</soapbox>
PS – Soon on TR: You won’t believe the magic trick that we used to collectively gain 300lbs of muscle! 10 pro tips! 😉
I’ll say from the off that I don’t run ad blockers so I see all of the adverts in their, um, glory. For the most part I’ve trained myself to ignore them.
However, sites in general need to take their readers into account in better ways. A better balance needs to be found. It’s all very well saying “We need the readers to view the adverts to survive” but if those adverts are annoying, intrusive, noisy or just bad, people are going to be turned off and either use an advert block or just plain not view the site. Either way, the site loses its advert revenue and goes out of business.
For the record, I think that Techreport have got a good, reader-centric balance which is why I continue to use the site. Those sites which annoy me get struck from the reading list.
The site hase become a member of a “product portfolio” of a “digital content and services company”. I don’t have reservations about using ad blockers on it any more.
And in regard of how they pay their bills: not from your money
Anyone else notice how quiet it has been over at X-bit?
This isn’t much of a surprise since Anand left. At least TechReport is still “pure.”
But for how much longer?
YOU NEED NOT WORRY. I’M STILL HERE.
That’s what worries me, honestly. 😉
LIAR. YOU LOVE ME.
<3
I don’t.
how can you not?
Sadly, a day will come when ownership must change. But I’m sure that Scott will do a much better job handing over the reigns than Anand did. TG is a far cry from what it used to be. CNet and Engadget are the same way. All of them were bought out by a larger company, though. Only Scott knows what the future holds TR.
How is TR “pure”? It’s the only tech website out there that is allegedly in cahoots with BOTH AMD and NVIDIA! Depending on the article! Intel too! Apple as well! Don’t forget Google! And Samsung! etc.