Licensing and conversion of Tom’s Hardware Germany
That was also one of those milestones that I kept quiet about for a long time, because none of it was pretty. At least not at first. In late fall 2017 (that nasty time of year again), I was told that US-based company Purch, as the owner, wanted to eliminate Tom’s Hardware Germany without replacement because they were planning to sell the parent company to UK-based Future PLC and the cost of migrating the German site to the new owner’s servers was probably too high. And although the site was still operating very profitably, they wanted to get a supposed clog off their leg, which would have first presumably caused costs once again. I will come back to the migration later, but I was faced with nothing for the time being.
Well, you could have bowed to it all and just got yourself a new job, because there were a few offers. But just give up like that? I then spent months negotiating with the old owners to license Tom’s Hardware Germany and continue it under my own management (and at full financial risk). The stupid thing was that they didn’t want to make such a contract with a freelancer and it was also necessary to bear the costs for a migration and continuation of Purch’s content, which in the end were already in the mid five-figure range in the first step.
The search for partners was not so easy and I simply went through my private phone book and called all the companies I could think of for a partnership as a “white knight”. In the end, it all came down to a more or less private investment, where company owners participated in the gotIT! GmbH as silent partners. During this period I also had the idea to establish my own domain registered to me (tomshw.de) and simply forward the old rest. So just in case the American friends happen to get any stupid ideas. The prudent thing is to try, and you never know. Yes, it has temporarily cost some traffic for now, but shit happens and independence must be planned.
This telephone round, during which absolute silence was also agreed with each of the company bosses, later only surfaced once more in public because it was unfortunately misinterpreted as a job interview. However, anyone who has worked on a freelance basis and can cope mentally well with the circumstances will certainly prefer such a constellation to a rigid employment relationship. As an early riser and workaholic anyway. But that has also been cleared up in the meantime, so bygones be bygones.
And since I always strive to minimize the risk for myself and my family, I had already built up a small laboratory in the years before, where I developed, improved or tested certain things on the side. I won’t show you everything, of course, because I also stick to the agreements with my partners, which includes not naming or showing various premises and facilities. Because some equipment is also provided by the partners and merely left for use. You don’t flext with it, you use it.
However, it’s much better to stand on two legs, and every now and then you get a prototype that you can test first. Win-win, so to speak, and a way to avoid sitting at the little ones’ nasty cat table when sampling, even without a long reach. At that time I already developed my talents and the tendency to “procuring crime”. Intel probably knows that by now, too.
It becomes mine
No need to wash dirty linen in retrospect either, but even the renaming of Tom’s Hardware Germany to igor’sLAB (the supposed douche apostrophe was already intended for the English-language extension back then) was actually rather unfunny and, above all, exactly right and important. Because just as they initially wanted to get rid of the German offshoot for supposed cost reasons, they now say: It’s going quite well and much better than expected.
And they wanted to allow the license to continue only if I migrated back completely with all new content. This means: abandonment of all own structures and rehosting on Future PLC’s servers, with complete abandonment of own responsibility and marketing. Anyone who looks at sites like Techradar, Anandtech or Tom’s Hardware US today knows what kind of advertising (including editorial) awaits readers there.It all comes from a common content factory and is adapted to the respective pages by contract writers. On top of that, they only allowed me to publish in German and reserved the right to use all my content in English myself and without monetizing me.
So how do you organize an elegant exit? First of all, everything was based on a thought experiment according to the “what-if” principle. Therefore, I have, so spontaneously over night, in the home page simply built its own logo with, after I had also changed the charts graphics step by step color and provided with the new logo. Has there been even one forum comment or query in this regard? Nope, nobody was aware of that, not even the licensor!
That makes you brave and actually also makes you want more. After a good week, I then removed the last remnants. Has anyone ever asked about this then? Again, no. The ranges continued to increase, but the TH logo was completely gone. Of course, I must also say that I have had the word and figurative mark, including the color code, protected. Only: Why should I pay a four-digit amount every month for a brand that doesn’t bring me anything, but for which I have to make all my articles and information freely available in return and which doesn’t even belong to me? Just buy it! If you happen to remember this sentence from one of the protagonists of the new Tom’s Styles, I’m sure you can relate to my general bellyaching. And now? Snip, snap and off…
Since we decided at the time, along with the current owner of the TH brand, not to release any internal details to clarify the licensing discussion and eventual removal from the Tom’s Universe, I am of course sticking to that. But I can reveal at least this much, that it was a side-letter in the contract with tough deadlines, which in the end enabled me to leave painlessly and transfer all rights, because the other side could not (anymore) fulfill some of the clauses due to certain (foreseeable) circumstances. So once again change the URL to igor’sLAB and start all over again.
Leaks and sensations? The art of omission
Which also polished up the content a bit, because it had to be. My desk in the lab is not a poison cabinet, but at least you can find things there (and in my network) that can also be used well in the media. Which also brings us to some “leaks” or admissions that I only got around to in the summer/fall of 2020, and which I am still trying to incorporate into the publication, with the art of deliberately omitting my sources. With increasing reach, however, one quickly collides with the concentrated swarm (non)knowledge of various platforms.
A nice example for this is e.g. the “POSCAP” drama on the RTX 3090. Of course, everyone knows that a POSCAP is a tantalum polymer capacitor from Panasonic, just like a “Kärcher” is a special high-pressure cleaner from Kärcher. But just as people in the factories often say POSCAP to normal polymer caps, you just kärch your floor, no matter which make there produces the hot steam. So this is purely about the principle of cause and effect, not about product names of a brand. The spikes and the consequence of the incorrect assembly (due to a defective, because not clear reference circuit diagram, which was leaked to me) were well known. My measurement data, also from the socket under the chip also went in full beauty to a certain manufacturer, who adjusted his drivers quite quickly and gratefully afterwards. Especially since a well known YouTuber could fully confirm this error pattern by replacing the capacitors with MLCC. At the time, however, all of this was quickly lost in the sneering flurry of words from the terminology experts, who didn’t care at all about the actual problem because it went beyond their professional horizons. The main thing was that something would stick and people would discuss brand names. Meh.
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