It Hurts When PC Magazine Says You’re Not Cool Anymore

Poor Google and YouTube. PC Magazine, which we closet-nerds hide better than teenagers with Playboy, is now saying the two sites have lost their cool. They’ve “sold out.”

Says this article about YouTube: “It was much more fun watching stupid videos online when A) it was counterculture and possibly even illegal (see “Lazy Sunday”); B) Google wasn’t indexing all your searches to deliver more relevant ads; C) You weren’t privy to the net worth of the site’s founders.”

The article continues: “The Web is littered with these sites and services. Some, like Napster, have faded into obscurity as they’ve gone legit. Others, like MySpace, just become bigger and, arguably, less cool. We liked all of the sites presented here much better before they started chasing profitability, mainstream acceptance, and/or legality.”

Sorry, PCMag. I love you. But this article is so out of character for you. If chasing legality, profitability and mainstream acceptance means you’re “selling out” than let’s examine your advertising-to-content ratio of your last three issues. And let’s take a look at your own horrendously commercial user interface that pushes content to commerce with the agility of a drunk guy hitting on a gaggle of bachelorettes.

Common, John C. Dvorak. Bring it on…