SoylentNews

Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/camera-review-site-dpreview-finds-a-buyer-avoids-shutdown-by-amazon/ [arstechnica.com]

Back in March, the editor-in-chief of the 25-year-old, Amazon-owned camera review site DPReview.com announced that the site would be closing [arstechnica.com] in April. The site was the casualty of a round of layoffs at Amazon that will affect a total of about 27,000 employees this year; DPReview was meant to stop publishing new pieces on April 10 and to be available in read-only mode for an undetermined period of time after that.

But then, something odd happened: The site simply kept publishing at a fairly regular clip throughout the entire month of April and continuing until now. A no-update update from EIC Scott Everett published in mid-May [dpreview.com] merely acknowledged that pieces were still going up and that there was "nothing to share," which wasn't much to go on but also didn't make it sound as though the site were in imminent danger of disappearing.

Yesterday, Everett finally had something to share: DPReview.com and its "current core editorial, tech, and business team[s]" were acquired by Gear Patrol [dpreview.com], an independently owned consumer technology site founded by Eric Yang in 2007. The deal had already closed [gearpatrol.com] as of yesterday, June 20.
[...]
"You figure this sort of stuff out before shutting down an entire division of your company, not in hindsight after weeks of backlash and leaving freelancers to scramble for new gigs as they’re told they won’t have a job," wrote Burgett.
[...]
"And to that, I’ll say again, fuck Amazon," said Burgett [twitter.com].

Original Submission