ZDNet lays off George Ou

George Ou is saying goodbye to ZDNet, at the behest of ZDNet.

“ZDNet blogs has been my online home since 2004. With the help and a lot of guidance from David Berlind, Stephen Howard-Sarin, and David Grober, I was brought in to the world of blogging and journalism. I enjoyed my work and all the conversations here and I hope you found it informative and entertaining,” George Ou posted this morning to his ZDNet blog.

MacDailyNews Take: Nope. Try deceptive and amateurish:
• ZDNet’s George Ou Exposed as Ignorant Microsoft Shill – RoughlyDrafted
George Ou’s Greatest Apple Hits! – The Macalope
George Ou: When Gerbilling isn’t fun enough – Artie MacStrawman’s Apple Orchard
George Ou’s Bad Idea: Comparing Apple Ads to Nazi Propaganda – Wired

Ou writes, “As of March 26, 2008, I have to say goodbye to ZDNet because of some corporate restructuring. I have no ill will towards any of my managers and I hold no grudges towards the company. This will be my last and final post on ZDNet so farewell my friends.”

Full article here.

Surely some wastewater recovery plant somewhere needs a shit-stirrer.

Badbye, Georgie.

MacDailyNews Note: ZDNet is part of CNET Networks, Inc. The Associated Press reported yesterday, “CNet Networks Inc. says it is laying off 120 employees as part of an effort to streamline the online media company while generating more content for its news and entertainment sites.”

AP reports, “All the layoffs — about 4.4 percent of CNet’s work force — will involve employees in the U.S., according to a document CNet filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

Full article here.

62 Comments

  1. Ou-ch.

    “And you get your IT security information from commercials now? Yes they conveyed the idea pretty well, but then again so did Joseph Gerbils. If you tell a lie often enough, people begin to believe it.”
    – George Ou

    “Oh. Oh, God. It’s over the line to compare an ad campaign to the Nazis. It’s just damn funny to anthropomorphize the leader of one of history’s most insidious propaganda campaigns into an adorable woodland creature. Nerd flame-outs are the best.”
    – Pete Mortensen, Wired

  2. Getting rid of Ou this late in the game doesn’t absolve ZDNet of the bulk of the responsibility.

    They bankrolled his biased, ignorant, inflammatory, and unprofessional opinions about Apple and continue doing so with other bloggers in their stable.

    The whole ZDNet should be taken down.

  3. Harry, this is Mac News because of his many Mac-related statements in the past – mostly (in the very least) incorrect. He had a pretty good understanding of the Windows world, though he was quite forgiving of it and amazingly defensive (without actually sounding so) of it. There was always a reason for him to minimize the problems Windows users faced and to exaggerate the potential problems a Mac user MIGHT face. In a different life, I guess.

    This is Mac News because the Mac world is getting a tiny, inconsequential, thorn out of its toe. Which reminds me that I didn’t check my sugars this morning – much more important, all around.

  4. With apologies to Morrissey & The Smiths…

    I was minding my business
    Surfing the Web on
    The homepage of ZDnet blogs
    With no worthwhile reading, all laughable lies
    Then set my eyes on the blistering sight
    Of a blogger in a tutu
    He’s quite strange
    And he’s packing up his desk today

    A scanty bit of a man
    With a fake spray-on tan
    That wouldn’t fool a drunk Lindsey Lohan
    As Bill sends the money to his lackey shills
    Who got a story on OS X’s ills?
    But a blogger in a tutu
    He’s quite strange
    And he’s packing up his desk today

    The suits in the office
    With heads full of profits
    Said : “My man, hand over your key and your badge”
    As George counts the money, Apple banisher
    He’s out in the rain
    His views so insane
    My god !
    The blogger in a tutu
    Oh yeah
    Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
    Oh …
    The blogger in a tutu
    Oh yeah
    Oh …

    The next day in the TalkBack
    With vitriol sleaze
    Promoting ignorance, FUD, and PC’s
    As George counts the money, Apple banisher
    He’s out in the rain
    Lies exposed again and again and again

    In the fabric of a tutu
    Such a man could get used to
    And his cube has a ‘vacant’ sign
    A ‘vacant’ sign
    Sign…

  5. “Learn english
    A few would mean 1-3. A couple would mean 4-9.”

    “Hacking Mac computers is big since the people that own them are more wealthy. It’s just that you don’t hear about them since criminal hackers don’t want you to.”

    (On Mac OS vulnerability.) “I decided to settle this once and for all”

    “OS X dates back to 2000”

    – George Ou

  6. Why does ZDNet need a George Ou when they’ve got Jason O’Grady. When a company is financially strapped, two Apple/Mac-haters on the payroll is an unaffordable luxury. But it does go to show how biased against Macs ZDNet and CNET have always been that they would have so many anti Mac columnists employed for a platform that, until recently, amounted less than 5% market share.

  7. Spark:
    O’Grady isn’t a Mac hater. He’s solidly a Mac guy, but he’s also kind of a dickhead.

    He used to have a great web site. It started out as a PowerBook site, There were good informative news items, tips and other info. There were also fairly active Mac discussions, like here.

    One day several years back, I forget the specifics, but a few people criticized him for something. He flew into a blog-rage, ragging on people and generally going ballistic.

    The next day he shut down the discussion boards.

    After a couple of years, he started ‘permitting’ a few people to post. Now you’ve got to jump through hoops to even TRY to post, going through several layers of those “type the distorted text image” thingies.

  8. @ Mr. Reeee,
    True about Jason O’Grady. He lives here in Philly (in the Northeast). He is a Mac person, but has become increasingly critical of Apple ever since that Asteroid lawsuit.

    I’ve never met him, but the tone of his columns suggests he would benefit from a Prozac script.

  9. CNET will never fire Ina Fried. How else can you kill 3 quota birds with one stone (male, female, and somewhere in between).

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  10. Okay, George wrote some of the stupidest stuff on his blog. However, I believe it was more out of ignorance and low brain power than malice. So, I feel a little sorry for him.

    I’m just laughing because he probably was looking forward to writing about the MBA getting hacked at the SecCanWest conference yesterday, because it was the topic of whether Macs can be hacked where George made himself infamous in the Mac world.

  11. @Mr Reeee & Cubert

    Yes, it was the Asteroid lawsuit that I remember him from. I didn’t know much about him before that unfortunate issue, but since then he certainly has and writes with a negative view of Apple. So maybe “Mac-hater” is the wrong description. I will modify it to “Apple-Hater”. But it is sadder than that because O’Grady really wants to love Apple, but cannot because he feels he has been wronged. He’s more of a spurned lover that takes his bitterness public.

  12. George Ou? Why the hell didn’t they send Mary Jo Foley packing too. Talk about an ignorant douchebag who has no place working under the guise of a journalist. Surely no other blogger detracts more from the credibility of ZDNet than old Mary Jo.

  13. Re: O’Grady
    Likes the products (used to concentrate on them nearly exclusively) but feels that he has been burned by Apple management, so he widened the focus of his efforts to include good stuff from as many companies as possible. Pulls no punches with Apple, but appreciates home run products from them as much as from anybody else.

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