It's been no secret that CNET has been hurtin' lately, Ziff Davis (a part of CNET) has been in debt for... well... ever. Ziff Davis is actually bankrupt [1], seriously. So it came as a bit of a surprise to most folks when CBS announced it's plan to buy CNET [2] this week. At first this seems like one of those moments when old folks realize what used to be cool, well after it's prime and said thing is no longer cool. CBS says it wants to cash in on some of those online ad bucks that CNET has. Wow, what a novel idea, internet advertising... I certainly don't see any ads on CBS' homepage already [3]... Remember when Time Warner and AOL merged [4]? That certainly ended happily for everyone... oh wait... they're going to split up [5]. And what is going to happen when AOL is on it's own? I'm already prepping the AOL = Worm Food story.
Anyways, CBS is going to buy CNET. Sounds like a decent deal at first glance. CBS is huge and able to absorb CNET's losses, while CNET is a big deal online... sort of. CNET used to be a big deal online, now they are pretty irrelevant. Ever wondered who owns those obvious top level domains like download.com and news.com? Well that's CNET. Back in the day every moron that thought he was too cool for AOL would type in download.com or news.com into his Netscape browser and commence to surfin'. But that was like ten years ago, now people know where to go to get news or download freeware. CNET's original business model died shortly after AOL and Time Warner merged, hence the perpetual bankruptcy.
What I foresee is CNET being stripped and gutted by CBS. CBS will repurpose CNET's reviews, news, and download sites just like what happened to Sportsline back in the day. The silver lining here is that 1up and EGM will now fall under the CBS umbrella and hopefully be exempt from any of the slaughter and gutting going on at CNET. Too bad this buyout didn't happen before GFW was axed [6].