CNET Networks, Inc. () is an Internet-based American media company based in San Francisco, California co-founded in 1993 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie. A publicly-held company, its stock trades on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol CNET. It has operations in 12 countries.
In 1999, CNET granted the right to Asiacontent to set up CNET Asia, operation was brought back in Dec 2000.
In early 2000, CNET Networks acquired comparison shopping site mySimon for $700 million.
In October of 2000, CNET Networks acquired ZDNet for approximately $1.6B. In 2001, Ziff Davis Media, Inc. reached an agreement with CNET Networks, Inc. to regain the URLs lost in the 2000 sale of Ziff Davis, Inc. to SoftBank Corp. a publicly traded Japanese media and technology company.
CNET has pushed to release more video clip content on their line of websites. They commonly feature early product reviews, game trailers, and a line of recommended products tagged with their "editor's choice". On November 25, 2005, CNET held a 12-hour marathon webcast dubbed the "holiday help desk"; viewers were encouraged to submit questions via email or telephone. In a subsequent episode of the Buzz Out Loud podcast, it was revealed that 174 questions had been answered on-air.
CNET also owns some of the internet's most well-known domain names, including download.com, gamespot.com, gamefaqs.com, news.com, search.com, tv.com, chat.com, Zdnet.com, computers.com and com.com as well as a significant international presence.
The aquisition of these sites has been met with resistance from the users, as Cnet has begun to force all of the websites to adopt a unified appearance.