How Gear Patrol acquired DPReview from Amazon | TechCrunch

In March, DPReview introduced that parent company Amazon was shutting it down, and the images world entered a twin state of shock and disbelief.

For 25 years, DPReview had served as a persistently dependable and authoritative voice on images gear. However images fans didn’t simply go to DPReview to drool over Canon’s latest lens or examine Sony and Nikon’s face-detection autofocusing capabilities. It was an energetic discussion board the place we (sure, I’m a type of images individuals) may hang around and geek out.

That such an in depth archive of images data and the robust group it had fostered was being banished to the abyss — the plan wasn’t even to archive it however to change it off utterly — was a blow to many. The announcement on DPReview garnered over 5,000 feedback, and other people took to social media to share their ideas about Amazon’s resolution.

However that quickly modified when Gear Patrol — which presents recommendation, how-tos and product critiques, however not particular to cameras — got here to the rescue. It finalized a deal to buy DPReview from Amazon for an undisclosed sum in June 2023. I used to be excited to talk to Eric Yang, Gear Patrol’s founder and CEO, to search out out what motivated the acquisition and what he realized from the method.

Authority and group

Yang was pushed to carry DPReview below the Gear Patrol aegis for a number of causes, and whereas it made enterprise sense, there was a private motivation there, too.

“It’s a enterprise, so it’s not a very altruistic endeavor,” Yang instructed me. “However DPReview may be very significant to me. It’s significant to lots of people, I feel, who’ve grown up on the web.”

DPReview is house to a unprecedented data base that Yang was reluctant to see disappear. However this information base doesn’t reside simply in its huge archive of critiques, shopping for guides, editorials and recommendation; it’s additionally within the robust group that this experience fostered. For thus many individuals, DPReview was a secure place to specific opinions, ask for recommendation, or simply be images geeks. All of this, collectively, was beneficial to Yang.

A pure match

Yang describes Gear Patrol as a spot that empowers individuals to pursue their pursuits and passions with confidence, which is why he believes that Gear Patrol and DPReview are a pure match. “We need to assist individuals have the data that they should pursue their specific passions in the very best approach,” Yang stated.