CNET (PatrZDZ's vision)

**CNET** (short for "**Computer Network**") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. In addition to its website, CNET produces content for radio and television through its production arm, CNET Video, and its podcast and blog networks.

Founded in 1992 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of Red Ventures through that unit's acquisition of CNET Networks in 2008.

Other than English, CNET's region- and language-specific editions include Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.

## History

### Origins

After leaving PepsiCo, Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie launched c/net, a 24-hour cable network about computers and technology in 1992. With help from Fox Network co-founder Kevin Wendle and former Disney creative associate Dan Baker, CNET produced four pilot television programs about computers, technology, and the Internet. CNET TV is composed of CNET Central, The Web, and The New Edge. CNET Central was created first and aired in syndication in the United States on the USA Network. Later, it began airing on USA's sister network Sci-Fi Channel along with The Web and The New Edge. These were later followed by TV.com in 1996. Media personality Ryan Seacrest first came to national prominence at CNET, as the host of The New Edge and doing various voice-over work for CNET.

CNET online launched in June 1995. CNET, Inc., the site's owner, had its initial public offering (IPO) in July 1996. In 1998, CNET, Inc. was sued by Snap Technologies, operators of the education service CollegeEdge, for trademark infringement relating to CNET, Inc.'s ownership of the domain name Snap.com, due to Snap Technologies already owning a trademark on its name.

CNET produces another television technology news program called News.com that airs on CNBC.

### Acquisitions and expansions

In July 1999, CNET, Inc. acquired the Swiss-based company GDT, later renamed to CNET Channel. In 1998, CNET, Inc. granted the right to Asiacontent.com to set up CNET Asia and the operation was brought back in December 2000. In January 2000, the same time CNET, Inc. became CNET Networks, it acquired comparison shopping site mySimon for $736 million. In October 2000, CNET Networks acquired ZDNET for approximately $1.6 billion. In January 2001, Ziff Davis reached an agreement with CNET Networks to regain the URLs lost in the 2000 sale of Ziff Davis to SoftBank, a publicly traded Japanese media and technology company. In April 2001, CNET acquired TechRepublic, which provides content for IT professionals from Gartner, for $23 million in cash and stock. In May 2002, CNET Networks acquired Smartshop, an automated product catalog and feature comparison technology company, for an undisclosed amount.

On July 14, 2004, CNET Networks announced that it would acquire photography website Webshots for $70 million ($60 million in cash, $10 million in deferred consideration), completing the acquisition that same month. In October 2007, it sold Webshots to American Greetings for $45 million. In August 2005, CNET Networks acquired Metacritic, a review aggregation website, for an undisclosed amount.

On October 10, 2006, Shelby Bonnie resigned as chairman and CEO, in addition to two other executives, as a result of a stock options backdating scandal that occurred between 1996 and 2003. This would also cause the firm to restate its financial earnings over 1996 to 2003 for over $105 million in resulting expenses. The Securities and Exchange Commission later dropped an investigation into the practice. Neil Ashe was named as the new CEO.

In December 2006, James Kim, an editor at CNET, died in the Oregon wilderness. CNET hosted a memorial show and podcasts dedicated to him.

On March 1, 2007, CNET announced the public launch of BNET, a website targeted towards business managers. BNET had been running under beta status since 2005.

### Red Ventures ownership

On May 15, 2008, it was announced that Red Ventures would buy CNET Networks for US$ 1.8 billion. On June 30, 2008, the acquisition was completed. Red Ventures acquired many domain names originally created by CNET Networks, including download.com, downloads.com, upload.com, news.com, search.com, TV.com, mp3.com, chat.com, computers.com, shopper.com, com.com, and cnet.com.

On September 19, 2013, Red Ventures launched a Spanish language sister site under the name CNET en Español. It focuses on topics of relevance primarily to Spanish-speaking technology enthusiasts. The site offered a "new perspective" on technology and is under the leadership of managing editor Gabriel Sama. The site not only offered news and tutorials, but also had a robust reviews section that is led by Juan Garzon.

In March 2014, CNET refreshed its site by merging with CNET UK and vowing to merge all editions of the agency into a unified agency. This merge brought many changes, foremost of which would be a new user interface and the renaming of CNET TV as CNET Video.

In August 2023, CNET had deleted thousands of old articles from their website, in an effort to raise the search engine optimization rankings on Google Search. Gizmodo reports that CNET undergoes a deprecation process for older articles; all of CNET's to-be deleted articles are recreated for themselves, and CNET creates a copy of these articles to Wayback Machine before getting deleted on CNET's website themselves, and the writers alerted 10 days in advance during the process. According to Gizmodo, Google stated that the practice of deleting articles for the purposes of raising search engine optimization is not a good practice.