How-To Geek Changed Ownership a Year Ago, Now It Covers GNU/Linux Quite a Lot
We've attempted to understand why How-To Geek (the Web site) became somewhat of a "Linux fan" in recent months [1, 2] and one thing that stands out is ownership change:
MakeUseOf was acquired 3 years earlier ("MakeUseOf was founded in 2006 and acquired and owned by Valnet Inc. since 2020"; XDA was 2022). It helps explain why the site or the content management system/engine (back-end) looks almost the same.
Going back to How-To Geek, let's examine closely. It links to a year-old press release that says: "Valnet Inc. (or “Valnet”) has successfully completed the acquisition of How-To Geek, a leading online technology publication platform based out of the US. How-To Geek is a crown jewel asset and is an acquisition that perfectly matches the Valnet playbook and portfolio of brands. [...] How-To Geek was founded in 2007 and has published over 20,000 articles reaching billions of viewers. Over the years, they have become a reputable source for everything tech related, creating content that is easy to digest for the everyday reader."
"We make sponsored content easy," they say. It might become a problem in the future.
These are the people who run the company.
No bios or work history are specified, so identifying potential conflicts of interest would not be trivial (e.g. past Microsoft employment, tending not to work out well for acquired sites). For the time being, however, let's just assume benign intentions. █