Once upon a time, long long ago, it seemed the post-cover-mag-and-bbs programming world consisted of the reg, the joelonsoftware forum and then the inquirer.

That was before proggit and then here, HN.

The inquirer started off as humour and investigation, but for many fans the inq faded when Mike Magee (a founder of the reg, who split to form the inq) moved on. I stopped following along when it became more and more corporate sponsored PR. Well, we've abandoned the reg too when it fell to the same fate.

Still, this is a sad, sad day :(

Please hope the internet archive archives everything properly forever.

> Please hope the internet archive archives everything properly forever.

For anyone else thinking this, remember that the internet archive is free to use but not free to run. If you want this preserved, you should consider donating.

It was all remarkably circular - Mike left El Reg supposedly for going corporate via the investors he'd sought, though the real decline of Reg came with later changes, and went off to found the Inq. I think at the start it was just him and some freelance part timers.

Then... A few years later he sells Inq to about the most corporate I can think of - VNU, the huge Dutch publisher with Computing and a mass of other serious titles. Err, wut? Obviously it would never be the same again... El Reg soon regained the title of most irreverent, and Inq a bit of a joke - for the wrong reasons. Of course neither were a patch on their early days.

Back in those days, my list also included Tom's Hardware.

Especially before Tom moved on, TH's reviews were uncommonly balanced and rigorous.

Oh yes, and Anandtech.com

It was the late 90s and early 00s. Those Pentium IIIs, Pentium 4s and AMD Athlon 64 reviews.

I am surprised how many knew El Reg and The Inquirer. I guess The internet was small then, I bet many under 30s may not have even heard of the two. We dont even do searching. We just go to Yahoo Directory and randomly click on some links. That was what Surfing the internet was really about. ( Might not have been the case if you are from US, from I have been told Surfing Internet was basically surfing AOL at the time)

I think Ars was in similar time frame, but they were not really daily news site, and focus more quality lengthy articles.

All these were before RSS was even a thing. I remember using a program called Website Monitor to check for changes to website. Thinking of it now make me realise how early it was my news addiction started.

Making a web page was basically GeoCities, doing anything serious on the web meant Perl / CGI-Bin, Front End was just simple ( in relative terms ) DHTML.

While we might have other communication and messaging platform ( IRC ) before, I believe ICQ was the first real "Instant Messenger". I remember my ICQ number being 6 digit only. That was pretty cool for its time as it meant you are early members.

Gosh this is bringing back lots of memories... While I dont read Inquirer any more, much like OP I moved on once Mike left the site. Somewhere on the back of my mind I know it is there, sometimes seeing links from Inquirer get posted on Reddit or HN, and put a smile on my face.

I guess I am old. Sad to see it go.

> consisted of the reg, the joelonsoftware forum and then the inquirer.

that's very selective. here's a few more: digg, fark, slashdot

I discovered the reg 3-4 years ago (while looking for more BOFH stories) and I don't feel like it's too much of corporate sponsored PR. YMMV, of course.

I think we should raise a glass to Mad Mike Magee and what he has wrought, First at El Reg, then at The Inquirer.

I used to bump into him quite a lot in the 80s when we both worked at VNU. Really nice guy, but - as a young journo - also quite scary :)

If I’m reading it right, the website will go offline after March. That seems unnecessary if VNU are still the ultimate owner.

VNU doesn't exist anymore, it was completely bought out and renamed The Nielsen Company.

Oh, come on Santa...my wish list said gizmodo!

Thank you, The Inquirer, for your excellent tech journalism over many years!

History will remember you fondly!

Why shut it down and not sell it?

Why shut it down and not let it run as a static site? Minor CDN costs, even smaller hosting costs, and all that ad revenue is free.

Would you buy an online magazine that is (all assumptions) unprofitable, has negative growth, and not a good brand image?

Brand recognition and pennies on the dollar. I'm really surprised they decided to shutter instead of sell it. It's definitely still worth something.

They could have stop updating news but kept the site alive. Maintenance cost should be negligible.

I'm fairly certain that exposure to The Inquirer during my youth is what fostered my interest in the tech industry. Though I have not read it regularly in years I would not be the person I am today without it. It will be missed.

That’s the thing. No-one’s read it recently...

I'll miss it. The Mike Magee days were the best.

I will really miss those people and their quite refreshing writing style. Best luck to them and may we meet again in some new online venture.

There's something sadly dutiful about being asked to accept cookies on such an announcement page.

“ we're still waiting on 10-nanometre desktop processors after all.” or 7 ... quite fun still.

If it's the same kind of authors as the register, I'd wager some already do. Also I don't think those that wrote for the inquirer are the kind of copy-pushers that gave rise to this meme.

> ...due to a recent decline in digital advertising, along with a change of focus for the business, it was time for The INQUIRER to go dark.

Oh ho, well well well.