Certainly this time! Ars Technica’s 2020 Deathwatch

Enlarge / If your company makes the Ars Deathwatch, there are always other options.

Sean Gallagher

Wow, 2019 that is. While we were hoping for a glowing new year when it started, the glow that we saw turned out to be just the Cherenkov radiation of nuclear-powered Russian doomsday torpedoes instead. Or maybe it was the sparkle of the million-dumpster fire march that became 2019 – with some of those dumpster fires lit by the companies we honor here in our 2020 edition of Ars Deathwatch.

Now it’s time to look angry ahead – well, we’re not really angry, just disappointed, so we’ll say “ennui” – in a new year, as our habit has become. We have taken the pulse of our editors and readers and divided the axis of all those beautiful dumpster fires in an effort to predict the companies, services, and products in the tech world that will shame the inevitable march of 2020. And we are not even going to mention the election cycle, I promise.

First, let’s get rid of our usual disclaimer: if you are a Deathwatch player for the first time, this is the case not a prediction of the actual demise of companies or technologies. We know that today it takes a lot to clear a company or technology from the face of the earth – after all, many of our previous Deathlisters emerged from Chapter 11 several times before moving to Chapter 7. Even the worst ideas and companies often get stuck with slowness or are absorbed by another company and spread in new and horrible ways.

So when we say “Deathwatch,” we actually mean that we look at technology-related entities that deal with (whether or not existing) economic, cultural, or legal danger. Companies can face challenges that make them irrelevant, making them victims of “canceling the culture,” making them technically inconsistent, or making them chum for sharks from acquisition, litigation, and other forms of business hell.

Although these rules are not written in stone, a candidate for the Deathwatch is generally a company or product department of a company that should have experienced at least one of the following:

• A longer period of lost market share in their specific category
• A longer period of financial losses or a pattern of annual losses
• Serious management, legal or regulatory issues that raise questions about the business model or long-term strategy of the company or product line

There were few actual fatalities on last year’s list, but some are about to say that our employees (I’m looking at you, Ron Amadeo) didn’t think they were even worth mentioning. (I’m sure that Essential, the smartphone unicorn that couldn’t do that, would probably be happy for the attention.) So instead of recreating our other battered survivors (wow, the prediction of Facebook management shakeup certainly isn’t) well older), we ‘re going to plow again in our new list of victims – some of them reappear.

Here they are: 2020’s . winners? First, red shirt (in reference to collegiate sport and Star Trek consumables) for 2020: what we called Oath.

-Sean Gallagher

Verizon Media (also known as the Yahoo / AOL division)

Julie Thurston Photography / Getty Images

The Yahoo / AOL division of Verizon (formerly called “Oath”) was on our Deathwatch list a year ago and has not done much since then to come to death. Now called “Verizon Media”, the business unit consisting of former web giants who lost their mojo years before Verizon bought them, started and ended 2019 with layoffs. The division had around 11,385 employees in early 2019, but fired nearly 1,000 people.

Verizon Media’s revenue in Q3 2019 by $ 1.8 billion decreased by two percent on an annual basis. Revenues from desktop advertisements continue to fall and mobile advertisements have not grown sufficiently to compensate for that decrease. Verizon insists that better days lie ahead, and CFO Matt Ellis says in a profit call on October 25 that: “For the first time, we see that mobile traffic is getting bigger than desktop traffic is falling in our core ownership and management products, including sports, finance, news, entertainment, at home and via e-mail. “But in an online advertising market dominated by Google and Facebook, Verizon Media seems doomed to remain a bit of a player at best.

Jon Brodkin

G / O Media

A position of GMG Union, the trade union that represents employees of the former Gizmodo Media Group (now G / O Media). Things are a bit tense.

Okay, we admit: the only thing that G / O Media is related to technology is the Gizmodo brand (formerly flagship) and the fact that the publications are delivered by internet packages. But still, G / O has been a fast-burning, self-burning machine of a type that we have not seen since the gas battle in Zoolander.

When it was Gizmodo Media Group, things were . well, they were really uncertain. Univision bought Gizmodo and its sister sites after the disintegration of Gawker Media following the Hulk Hogan trial. But it soon became clear that the Univision performers had absolutely no idea what to do with what they had purchased.

So when in April (alleged) digital media mogul Jim Spanfeller – formerly with Forbes, Ziff Davis and Playboy – and the private equity company Great Hill Partners bought Gizmodo, the group combined with The Onion and everything again G / O Media, there was a lot of joy. Engrote / Jim Spanfeller, shown here in 2010, bought Gizmodo and The Onion from Univision in April. It has been a bit rough since then.

Peter Foley / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Spanfeller promised to make the web publications profitable again and said that no layoffs were needed. He changed the combined sites as “a powerful publishing platform to engage wealthy and influential Millennials.” (Okay, boomer.)

Just two weeks after Spanfeller took over, 25 of the 400 staff members of G / O were fired, including the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo. Spanfeller brought in managers from his previous companies and alienated some executives because he pushed out all the non-white male leadership in the process after promising to honor a commitment to diversity. Deadspin published an article in August about the growing rancor between staff and management.

Shortly thereafter, Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell stopped to take a job with our sister publication Wired after she was told that she should stop non-sports coverage on the site, citing her personal ethics.

The new G / O Media editorial director Paul Maidment then instructed Deadspin writers to adhere to sport. They didn’t, and editor Barry Petchesky was fired. Deadspin writers then decided to stop en masse in what is perhaps the most pyrian work in recent media history.

The conflict with staff, including the trade union, has directly cost G / O income. Staffers wrote messages asking for feedback from the reader about a Farmer’s Insurance advertising campaign with auto-play videos, and G / O execs ordered the messages to be cut off. The staff complained that the stories were placed in a position by the Twitter account of the union. Farmers then pulled the $ 1 million advertising campaign.

The management problems also caused intimidation processes by former female executives who said that Spanfeller created a hostile working environment for women. Maidment stopped. Other execs have fled.

So instead of putting out the smoldering tire fire, in just eight months Spanfeller’s conflict with union workers has turned G / O Media into a raging hell that is fueled by money and careers. Call it a Boomer-Millennial fight if you want; I’m a Gen-Xer and I’m just here to see everything burn.

-Sean Gallagher