

AnandTech Acquired by Purch - uptown
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8790/anandtech-acquired-by-purch

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ChuckMcM
Hmm, bought by the same folks who bought Tom's hardware. So does anyone else
think that Purch could buy Dr Dobbs and turn themselves into the online
equivalent of Byte or PC World from the 90s?

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jmulho
When I saw the headline I thought "Oh no, someone bought AnandTech. It is
probably going to become a slow annoying popup ad site like Tom's Hardware."
Now I learn that is exactly what is going to happen.

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imaginenore
Adblock

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kmfrk
Won't help you on iOS.

Incidentally, it feels these days like half of the websites I open in
TweetBot's WebView break completely, usually due to a delayed pop-up ad. It's
the dumbest trend, which, at best, only works on desktop.

~~~
chappi42
Well, then buy a phone which doesn't take away your freedom

~~~
EC1
Do you really want to do this?

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chappi42
Why not, what do you mean?

If you buy an Android phone you can use Firefox with adblock [1] and the ads
are gone.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/adblock-
edge/...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/adblock-edge/?src=hp-
dl-mostpopular)

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Dwolb
Why does this firm have to grow?

From the story, ''AnandTech has been profitable since its inception; it’s been
on a great growth curve these past couple of years and we’ve always been able
to do more with less, but lately there’s been an increased investment in high
quality content.''

Additionally, ''...they [Purch] have a sustainable business model, are
profitable and have the sort of reach AnandTech needs to really hit the next
level.''

If the business is profitable and has been from its inception, it could be
possible investors have had a sizeable return on investment. If this is the
case and earnings are steady, it's a large risk to transfer ownership to a new
stakeholder for the sake of 'growth'. For example, new ownership and more
users may alienate the existing, profitable userbase.

However some web businesses may require 'user growth' as a minimum industry
requirement to stay alive.

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micv
Anand has left to work at Apple. How could he hold onto ownership without
everyone and their dog bringing up the obvious conflict of interest every time
the site gave a good review to Apple or a bad review to one of Apple's
competitors? I've already seen people complaining about it on places like
Reddit.

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echoless
This seems like the most plausible reason. I'm curious why he didn't sell it
off before he left to work at Apple. Perhaps he didn't have the deal ready
yet.

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baq
if there's one thing i'll remember Anand and AnandTech for, it'll be one of
the biggest driving forces behind the SSD revolution. i feel like his initial
article started the ball rolling and we've all been better off as a result.

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oldmanjay
Anandtech will no longer be associated with dailytech, which is possibly the
best news I've read all year. That site makes me shake my head so hard my neck
hurts.

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TheMagicHorsey
Tom's Hardware is a garbage website now. Anandtech was much better. Now that
the Anandtech podcast doesn't exist anymore, I have nowhere to go for my hype-
free hardware newscast.

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higherpurpose
Hype-free hardware podcast? Are you kidding me? There was no Anandtech podcast
where Anand wouldn't hype up Intel's chips. Been hearing him for a year and
half how "Haswell chips will own tablets" or something - before Haswell was
out that is.

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JimmaDaRustla
Anand should have just shut it down before leaving...

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kayoone
They will most likely value the vision and concept of Anand, otherwise he
would not have agreed to sell. He's not actively running it anymore, so it
makes sense. The guy worked on it for 15 years and brought it up from nothing,
well deserved imo.

