That’s too bad. Tom’s Hardware is unreadable for me these days.
Tom’s has sucked for many, many years. Anandtech was at the top of its game.
Which might be why they bought it.
Regardless, if they do tinker they’ll break the value and the decent staff are likely to move on in short order.
There was no way you could have “Anandtech: wholly owned by Anand Shimpi”, and “Anand Shimpi, Apple employee.”
It’s possible the “grace period” between the purchase and Anand leaving was contractual, to make sure that the page views remained once the headline act officially left, and its valuation change.
Sure you could. Anand could have completely separated himself from editorial and retained ownership. Or he could have transformed the entire site into an apple advertisement. Or he could have sold it to the current staff but retained a revenue share. Any number of ways to do it.