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May 16, 2008 2:24 PM PDT

Conde Nast buys Ars Technica

by Stephen Shankland

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.

Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.
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by unknown unknown May 16, 2008 3:21 PM PDT
Hopefully they don't ruin it.
Reply to this comment
by ewelch May 16, 2008 8:14 PM PDT
Oh lordy, Wired takes over ARS? Thus begins the downfall.
Reply to this comment
by ServedUp May 16, 2008 8:27 PM PDT
Nah, I say news.com is going down. I mean what's up with the main page.
Can anybody say UgLy? The "Just In" headline with all those headline links
seems like it was a designed by committee. But the design of the site
overall has definitely gone down. Seems like they're under going a power struggle.

But ARS is way cool! Same with Wired.com. These are hip tech sites
geared to everyone including the gen-Y crowd. Just hope it doesn't get too anal, like
ZDNET or CNET for that matter.
Reply to this comment
by Galaxy5 May 17, 2008 12:09 AM PDT
CBS buys News.com. WIRED buys Ars.

This is the end of the innocence. Remember when magazines were like Harper's during the Civil War? Yeah. That's over now.
Reply to this comment
by andyross May 17, 2008 6:01 AM PDT
News.com was not a small company, unless you consider $1,800,000,000 to be a small company.

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.
Reply to this comment
by andyross May 17, 2008 6:01 AM PDT
News.com was not a small company, unless you consider $1,800,000,000 to be a small company.

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.
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