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DPReview's Founder Blasts Amazon's CEO: 'What a Waste'

Apr 04, 2023
Jaron Schneider
     

Phil Aksey DPReview

As Amazon prepares to start winding down DPReview, the publication's
founder Phil Askey has publicly spoken out against the decision and
put Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy on blast, calling the choice to shut down
the site a "waste."

Askey, who founded DPReview in 1998, stayed on with the company even
after its acquisition by Amazon in 2007 for three years until he
eventually left in 2010. Despite the news that DPReview would be
closed breaking in mid-March, Askey did not immediately provide his
opinion regarding the decision outside of a tweet he published
indicating his surprise.

     I'm obviously devastated to hear this news which has come as a
      complete shock. I'm a little lost for words at this point. #
                    dpreview https://t.co/5rKjeksIJG

                 -- Phil Askey (@philask) March 22, 2023

That changed this past weekend when he took to LinkedIn to share his
dissatisfaction with the decision to close arguably the biggest
photography resource on the planet.

"DPReview has 8,800 news articles, 1,300 reviews (including 180+
video reviews), 160 opinion pieces, 160 interviews, 1,700+ sample
galleries almost all created by DPReview staff stretching back to
1998," he writes on LinkedIn.

"From the community, easily the most active and passionate in any
category there are over 47 million forum posts and the challenges
system has over 1.1 million photographs. It is the number one result
for any photography related search (and has been for almost its
entire life)," he continues.

"I truly hope that Andy Jassy can see what a waste tearing this team
apart and burning all this content will be, and what a huge loss it
would be to the photography community and the Internet as a whole."

Askey tags Jassy, Amazon's current CEO, in the statement, clearly
indicating that he expects him to read it.

Phil Askey Statement on LinkedIn

While not officially mentioned in the announcement of the impending
closure, PetaPixel learned early on that Amazon's plan was to first
lock the site for an indeterminate amount of time before deleting it
altogether.

"The site will be locked, with no further updates made after April
10th 2023. The site will be available in read-only mode for a limited
period afterwards," DPReview's notice reads. "You can request a
download of all the photos and text you've uploaded to the site. This
will be available until April 6th, after which we will not be able to
complete the request."

While the company's plan appears to still involve locking the site on
April 10, it's not clear if Amazon still intends to delete all the
content. Even without staff, DPReview's server costs are likely quite
high given the huge amount of image data that has been accumulated
over the years. That said, it's all stored on servers that Amazon
owns, which has led many to question why the company can't just
continue to let the content live on.

Amazon has not made a public statement on the matter.

Culture, News, Websites
amazon, andyjassy, closure, dpreview, industrynews, layoffs,
philaskey, shutdown
     
Related Articles

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    Library
  * DPReview is Hoping to Convert Its Review Prowess Into Sales with
    GearShop
  * The Panasonic LX100 is 'Probably the Best Zoom Compact Ever
    Made', Says DPReview
  * To Save its Content, Archive Team is Attempting to Back Up All of
    DPReview

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