"Start-up company killer" AOL buys GDGT

According to TechCrunch's exclusive report, AOL is discussing acquisitions with GDGT, a consumer electronics site, which says the acquisition will be completed in a matter of days. At present, TechCrunch has contacted GDGT, but has not received a response.

"Tool-Type technology website" Gdgt

As a consumer electronics website, Gdgt was born on July 1, 2009, founded by Engadget co-founder Peter Rojas and Engadget author Ryan block. It is a community based concept, with Wiki features, users can add product information, but also to find related product comments, this UGC of the quality of the site operation model depends entirely on the reader itself.

According to the founder, GDGT is a "tool-type Web site".

Perhaps because of the old club's relationship, GDGT's cooperation with AOL's Engadget has been going on for some time. Gdgt the vast amount of product information, user comments, questions and answers, and discussions to Engadget, and in return, Gdgt Harvest Engadget a huge readership.

GDGT's parent company, Pastfuture, has now raised 3.72 million of dollars, including Spark Capital, True Ventures, Betaworks, AOL Ventures, Lerer Ventures, and so on.

It is not the first time that GDGT's takeover rumours have been made, TechCrunch said that in the past few years GDGT had been intrigued by CBS, Amazon, and CNET. This also means that AOL's deal will not be finalized.

--aol, a start-up company killer.

In the late 90, the all-powerful AOL once monopolized the dial-up Internet service in North America, and from 2005 onwards, the stubborn old Internet began to make up for the lost users in the broadband business by acquiring start-ups.

However, for a long time, AOL has been playing a tireless role, by the vast number of young people ridiculed as "start-up company killer." "One of the most" classic "scenes is that AOL bought 850 million dollars for social networking site Bebo in 2008, then sold less than 10 million in less than two years, and lost almost 99% of its investment!

2005, AOL acquired XDrive. Then the user loses heavily. Three years later, AOL wants to sell XDrive, but no one wants the lowest price. Eventually the company had to transfer XDrive's website traffic to rival Box.net and Elephantdrive.com, a deal that AOL lost 5 million dollars. In 2006 AOL acquired Userplane.com, a software platform for charting, which was used in MySpace's chat room. Later, Userplane's monthly independent visitor fell to less than 150,000, and MySpace disappeared from its client list.

Acquisition of the "media empire"

News sites are an important target for AOL's takeover plan. June 11, 2009, AOL acquired the regional news network Patch. The TechCrunch of Silicon Valley, Engadget, The Huffington Post (Huffington Post) is also under its command. In addition, AOL's media assets include the movie information website Moviefone, the game information website Joystiq and so on. At present, AOL's news network has more than 20,000 blogs, Haina rivers.

The shift to media business stems from Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL in 2009, when Armstrong, the former Google North American sales director, was split between Time Warner and AOL. As a result, the company established a new direction of development-to become the "media empire." After completing a takeover of the Huffington Post, AOL merged all the media business, and the company was more willing to build large media assets to get a wider coverage.

An internal AOL memo leaked in 2011, in a 58-page memo in which AOL portrayed the so-called "AOL Road"-How to become a "media empire".

However, the strategy has been widely criticized by the outside world. Subsequently, Engadget 8 editors from AOL. The birth of The Verge (formerly Thisismynext) originated from the conflict between Engadget and AOL.

The shock also occurs in TechCrunch. September 2011, TechCrunch founder of Arlington (Michael Arrington) to the AOL showdown, followed by columnist Paul Carr left, in November, senior editor Sarah Lacy quit, December CEO Heather Harde quit.

Due to the departure of the core members, the quality of these technology blog articles is not as good as before.

Why "destroy the human being tireless"?

Why does AOL become a tireless "startup Killer"?

We mentioned three points in an earlier article:

Management corruption bloated, not enterprising, everywhere rivalry

AOL no longer cares about their customer base

AOL is no longer synonymous with search and is now the object of ridicule for young people

From the background of the company's executives, as a sales-born CEO, Armstrong's acquisition of media assets is clearly a media-borne boost to AOL's advertising revenue. Engadget former editor Paul Miller believes AOL has seen content as a cheap commodity for advertising. This is commercially reasonable, but it will not bring good news.

In short, AOL is sacrificing the quality of the news in exchange for traffic. It is clearly unrealistic for a bloated media giant to try to apply all of its takeover media to a model.

Another interesting explanation: everyone used to be happy with a new small company. But now the face of a huge bloated AOL, a no longer cool Web 1.0 companies, who will be interested in the explosion?

If the GGDT acquisition is true, then we wish it good luck.