Sad news. I've never bought a digital camera without first checking that website. Invaluable resource. I've been following their youtube channel as well for a few years as well and they just did an episode on this: : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLikDUacsC8
This does make you wonder if this was the only possible outcome for Amazon or whether they are just too indifferent/lazy to make an effort to sell this to somebody else. I bet there would have been interested parties that could have taken over. It's the kind of bean counter move where the effort of finding out the answer to that question was balanced against the potential benefits (millions?) and disregarded for some reason. I don't buy the notion that this was not salvageable. It's an institute and a great brand with a loyal following. That has got to be worth something.
From the sounds of it, not all is lost, the two people behind the youtube channel sound like they will just continue on their own. They grew the channel to 400K+ subscribers. So that's not nothing. I hope Amazon does the right thing with the content of dpreview.
This was always the likely outcome given the decline in camera sales. They're not going to be making money hand over fist with hockey-stick growth, which is what it takes to justify your existence at a company like Amazon.
I'm surprised they ever bought DP Review in the first place. As a purchase it makes no sense for a company like Amazon.
This does make you wonder if this was the only possible outcome for Amazon or whether they are just too indifferent/lazy to make an effort to sell this to somebody else. I bet there would have been interested parties that could have taken over. It's the kind of bean counter move where the effort of finding out the answer to that question was balanced against the potential benefits (millions?) and disregarded for some reason. I don't buy the notion that this was not salvageable. It's an institute and a great brand with a loyal following. That has got to be worth something.
From the sounds of it, not all is lost, the two people behind the youtube channel sound like they will just continue on their own. They grew the channel to 400K+ subscribers. So that's not nothing. I hope Amazon does the right thing with the content of dpreview.