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Farewell, Internet
Well, here we are. More than four years after launching, Switched and DownloadSquad are unfortunately being closed. I've been thrilled to work at these two sites that have expanded tech coverage beyond the usual gadgets and social networks to cooking, culture, design, art and more. It's been humbling to work with these incredibly dedicated and talented teams of writers, and it would have been impossible to do it without them.
Going forward, you'll still be able to get the best tech news coverage from Engadget, HuffingtonPost Tech, Joystiq and TUAW. While we're still working out some of the details, Switched and DownloadSquad will continue to live on the Web and be fully accessible via search. Understandably, our Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr presences will quiet down, but you can still follow the Switched and DownloadSquad writers on their personal accounts. Thanks for reading.
Comments
360
Subscribe to commentsSimon BradleyApr 12th 2011 12:18PM
Cant believe this!! Like many other people have said.. this is a blog that I come to on a daily basis!! Going to miss this site A LOT!!! How can you close a site down that must have massive amount of traffic coming to it? WHY???????
JonApr 12th 2011 12:21PM
Curse you AOL!!! Why do you have to ruin perfectly good web sites by your involvement? http://www.ericdsnider.com/snide/leaving-in-a-huff/
Thanks to the writers for their posts over the years. Even when they occasionally mentioned Apple products in a less than ideal light and got slammed by commenters for it. I hope you guys are planning on starting up something new to replace the void in my RSS feeds.
bkj216Apr 12th 2011 12:21PM
Sad to see you guys go, but honestly I kinda saw this coming. I'd like to see the best features of this site integrated into Engadget tho.
Now I wanna see who wins the duke-out between TechCrunch, CrunchGear, and Engadget. THAT's gonna be a tough one.
Jason WashburnApr 12th 2011 12:28PM
Wow, I wish this was an April fool's day joke. For 2 years you all have been my primary source for news on all things software. You will be very sorely missed. Like Noah, Downloadsquad was one of only 3 blogs I read every day. Best fortunes to all of you!!
JohnMWhiteApr 12th 2011 12:22PM
Well this sucks. Sorry to see you guys go, I subscribe to the RSS feed and have found so many nifty little tips, tools and time-wasters thanks to this site. It's such a useful place. What happened? This seems incredibly sudden.
AsgaroApr 12th 2011 12:31PM
Yeah I also didn't expect this!
The site is so famous, and it's one of my most read feeds in Google Reader.
Marty K.Apr 12th 2011 12:24PM
Ok, but can you tell us WHY you're shutting your doors? I think we deserve an answer.
I'll keep your site in my daily blog rotation for a long, long time to come. I love you guys, even Sebastian.
DrakkenfyreApr 12th 2011 12:38PM
Aol merged with Huffington Post.
Ariana Huffington has control over all the Aol blogs now. She is shutting down and merging a ton of them. Two of the senior editors at Engadget also got fired (they were two of the heaviest Apple-biased people anyway.)
You want to direct your anger at someone? Direct it at Huffington Post. Find an email link there, complain. It won't do much, but at least you have a source to vent your anger at. I think they should receive thousands of complaints.
kingkool68Apr 12th 2011 12:23PM
Booo! You will be missed great download squad bloggers. I'm sure a blog like this could be run much more efficiently.
AemonyApr 12th 2011 12:23PM
It has been nice following you these last years and I bid you all good luck in your future endeavours!
Meh, when Lifehacker let me down you at least didn't... I guess I'm back to lurking around the cybernet to find another excellent source of technological income, one which haven't been infected and riddiculed with the idiocy of mainstream commentators.
Michael WendellApr 12th 2011 12:24PM
Can someone post a list of those twitter accounts mentioned in the article? The ones for the writers of Download Squad?
Thomas HoustonApr 12th 2011 12:38PM
@Michael Wendell Should have them all here:
Vlad Bobleanta - @bvlad
Samuel Gibbs - @samuelgibbs
Jay Hathaway - @strutting
Sebastian Anthony - @mrseb
Lee Mathews - @leemathews
Victor Agreda Jr. - @superpixels
Thomas Houston - @thomashouston
DeanoApr 12th 2011 12:43PM
@Michael Wendell +1 here, I hope they keep blogging but we'll need links!
PaulApr 12th 2011 12:32PM
So long, Download Squad writers and readers. It's been fun...
David SparkmanApr 12th 2011 12:25PM
Sucks to see this blog shut down. I recently purged 90% of the blogs I followed from my RSS reader. Download Squad was one that made the cut.
I am saddened to see it shut down.
jackrabbitjrbApr 12th 2011 12:26PM
This is sad news.
I, for one, will not be reading Huffington Post Tech or anything on Huffington Post -- simply because I hate the format. What a mess.
robApr 12th 2011 9:20PM
@jackrabbitjrb
Calling Huffington Post Tech a replacement for something like Download Squad is a joke, a bad joke. They have crap content that generally more about the industry than the actual technology. Industry news is boring, which is basically all AOL's blogs have left.
Jon NiolaApr 12th 2011 12:27PM
Oh man that's a bummer. I have enjoyed this site for a while now and always found it had a nice niche between the other tech sites.
Yet another reason for me to boycott AOL/Huffpo
KualaBeeApr 12th 2011 1:04PM
@Jon Niola I find this so true. The software niche especially traditional desktop applications. However the writing was on the wall for a while, on other tech sites, posts about desktop applications even high profile ones like Firefox usually are the least commented on.
Still.....sad day
NcrdrgApr 12th 2011 12:36PM
Noooo!!! Damn you AOL! That was a really great tech site to follow. I even unsubscribed several others tech blogs because of your quality reporting.