Conde Nast buys Ars Technica

Ars Technica, a decade-old independent tech news and analysis site, is becoming a part of Conde Nast's Wired Digital group.

The acquisition will be announced Monday, sources familiar with the acquisition said, confirming a report Friday in TechCrunch. The price tag was near $25 million, TechCrunch said.

CondeNet, the Conde Nast online division run by Sarah Chubb, has acquired several other sites, including Reddit and SFO*Media's HotelChatter. It's generally left those sites alone, so that seems a likely outcome for Ars Technica, as well. But of course the company will have more online ad inventory to sell.

The Wired Digital group within CondeNet also includes Wired.com and Reddit.

[unknown unknown]

Hopefully they don't ruin it.

[ewelch]

Oh lordy, Wired takes over ARS? Thus begins the downfall.

[ServedUp]

Nah, I say news.com is going down. I mean what's up with the main page.<br />Can anybody say UgLy? The "Just In" headline with all those headline links<br />seems like it was a designed by committee. But the design of the site <br />overall has definitely gone down. Seems like they're under going a power struggle.<br /><br />But ARS is way cool! Same with Wired.com. These are hip tech sites <br />geared to everyone including the gen-Y crowd. Just hope it doesn't get too anal, like<br />ZDNET or CNET for that matter.

[Galaxy5]

CBS buys News.com. WIRED buys Ars.<br /><br />This is the end of the innocence. Remember when magazines were like Harper's during the Civil War? Yeah. That's over now.

[andyross]

News.com was not a small company, unless you consider $1,800,000,000 to be a small company.<br /><br />I read ArsTechnica regularly, although I wonder what is going on with the journals links on the right. Now when you click on an icon, it opens all the articles instead of just showing the titles.

[andyross]

News.com was not a small company, unless you consider $1,800,000,000 to be a small company.<br /><br />I read ArsTechnica regularly, although I wonder what is going on with the journals links on the right. Now when you click on an icon, it opens all the articles instead of just showing the titles.