Stardock involvement with Neowin FAQ


Recommended Posts

I've put together a little FAQ due to the ill informed comments here. Neowin is a self sustaining independent company, we don't receive money from Stardock, and they also won't determine our fate like other sites that are taken over by large companies such as AOL. Neowin will disappear when we can't fund ourselves, and even then Brad probably wouldn't take that lying down as he is partly responsible for turning Neowin from a hobby into a company.

Q: Does Stardock own Neowin?

A: They have a 40% stake in Neowin, with 60% equally shared between the two founders Steven Parker & Marcel Klum.

Q: Why?

A: Stardock turned us from hobby site into a limited liability company (at their own cost) which also included legal representation and a budget to buy our own servers.

Q: What changed as a result of Stardock involvement?

A: Not much, we already covered Stardock news before they became involved in 2005 and Brad Wardell was actually already a newsposter as well (and a member since 2002). Additionally we immediately became self sustaining and didn't have to rely on 3rd party rented servers. We went from being hosted on one (rented) server, to the current 5 of which Neowin LLC owns.

Q: Why did Stardock want to become involved?

A: For the first 3 or 4 years Neowin leaked a lot of Microsoft information about Windows, Microsoft was also (unintentionally) able to get our server wiped once, and we've been taken offline a number of times because we didn't have control over the server. Brad wanted to give us the opportunity to control our own destiny which from 2005 onward is exactly what has happened.

Q: Is Neowin required to cover all Stardock related news on Neowin?

A: Simply put, No. Compared to other news sites we cover very little Stardock news, and Stardock as a shareholder has every right to require this, although Brad feels that Neowin needs to stay independent. Whatever news we do cover is because our staff want to cover it.

Feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Can you talk more about the Microsoft server wipe? What happened there, or is this best for another thread?

Here you go http://news.cnet.com/2100-1025-991624.html this was the worst of the problems we had with Microsoft, but they continued well into 2004 which is when Brad contacted me and said "lets do something about this".

  • Like 1

Did you guys asked Microsoft for an elaboration, as Tom said that they didn't contacted you but you were told by the ISP.

Sounds to me a bit too harsh

Microsoft later admitted it was a communications error, normally they would have contacted us, but the legal company representing Microsoft decided to go straight to the provider instead (who panicked for some reason). In their (Microsoft's) defense they offered a team to get us back online and other things such as hosting, which we declined.

I don't understand where the "Ill Informed" comments are coming from. Those posters said Neowin is 40% owned by Stardock and you just confirmed it? So where is the misconception coming from. Seems people are more informed than you give them credit for.

The ill informed is that we're required to cover Stardock news, or that they pay us as well. I wanted to clear that up :)

  • Like 1

The ill informed is that we're required to cover Stardock news, or that they pay us as well. I wanted to clear that up :)

Ok I understand. I've never believed in my mind that you guys have ever covered them more than any other company and I think you guys are quite objective with your stardock coverage and always have been. (Y)

  • Like 2

Ok I understand. I've never believed in my mind that you guys have ever covered them more than any other company and I think you guys are quite objective with your stardock coverage and always have been. (Y)

Thanks :) I've also instructed the newsposters to include a link to this post when we cover Stardock news in future, as a sort of disclaimer.

I don't understand where the "Ill Informed" comments are coming from. Those posters said Neowin is 40% owned by Stardock and you just confirmed it? So where is the misconception coming from. Seems people are more informed than you give them credit for.

There are people in there claiming Brad Wardell was influincing the creation of some "negative" Windows 8 editorial articles to somehow benefit Stardock.

They invested in Neowin and now own 40% of it, Doesn't mean we have to like their products or views. Just means they have their posts babysat to make sure no trolls upset them.

No comments were deleted from that newspost that I know of, even if I don't like the unjustified harshness directed toward them. You should give us a little credit Shaun :p

There are people in there claiming Brad Wardell was influincing the creation of some "negative" Windows 8 editorial articles to somehow benefit Stardock.

Yeah that isn't true, the editorial I did was my own words and many other sites have posted similar views. Just because Brad has a problem with it doesn't mean we have to. Plus those editorials were written before Brad said his piece publicly.

I didn't say any posts were removed, just that there are a lot of posts with negative views on and as soon as one from Stardock gets some it warrants another thread reasserting their position. It's like a rank pulling thing an it's if anything makes me not like them a little bit more each time, even if it's not requested by them.

There are people in there claiming Brad Wardell was influincing the creation of some "negative" Windows 8 editorial articles to somehow benefit Stardock.

I don't believe that. And I agree with what Brad said.

I think there is a lot of bias from many people that seem to have this notion that anything bad posted about Windows 8 is trolling or has an ulterior motive behind it. The fact is Metro is a very controversial feature that has split people down the middle on if they like it or not and the people who like it need to accept the fact that there is a large amount of people that don't and that they are free to air their opinion just like those who like it are.

And to be honest it makes no real logical sense as to why Stardock would choose to push negative articles about Windows 8 because they will make a mint selling software to bring back the normal Windows 7 desktop experience once Windows 8 ships. No question.

  • Like 3

I didn't say any posts were removed, just that there are a lot of posts with negative views on and as soon as one from Stardock gets some it warrants another thread reasserting their position. It's like a rank pulling thing an it's if anything makes me not like them a little bit more each time, even if it's not requested by them.

The Start8 posts didn't warrant this kind of response, the comments in the linked article did. I don't like having to sit back and allow people to spout something which is untrue. We should be able to tell it like it is because otherwise people who know no better will start to believe the comments. I also agree we need to add a disclaimer to the posts in future and this topic provides that.

I've known about Neowin since 2004 or something like that and this is news to me, had to idea Stardock owned parts of Neowin.

Never felt there was too much Stardock news. If anything else I'd say there isn't a whole lot considering all the different programs they have. When was the last time there was a news post about WindowBlinds, for exemple.

  • Like 1

It's sad how threads like this become necessary again and again, isn't it?

Sad or childish?

The part about "Why did Stardock get involved"... You have noted that they did this as a result of Microsoft's harassment (?) of Neowin. But what was their motivation? Why do they care?

+1

I too would like some clarification on this.

Sad or childish?

Sad. The Stardock involvement with Neowin has been explained countless times. It shouldn't be necessary for Neobond to have to explain it again.

  • Like 3

The Start8 posts didn't warrant this kind of response, the comments in the linked article did. I don't like having to sit back and allow people to spout something which is untrue. We should be able to tell it like it is because otherwise people who know no better will start to believe the comments. I also agree we need to add a disclaimer to the posts in future and this topic provides that.

Personally I think you exposed yourself to criticism when you jumped in and attacked rfirth's perfectly reasonable comment. You've got to admit it doesn't look great when the owner of a site with such strong links to Stardock jumps in to defend them so quickly.

It also seems strange that Stardock's opinion warrants a news article given the fact that they are a fairly irrelevant company.

  • Like 2

The article was only created because they own part of the site. which is the only reason Startdock invested in Neowin, and everyone knows that. No one honestly cares about Stardock's views on anything.

To say Neowin receives no money from stardock is just silly as well. They pay your legal fees and servers costs. So basically they pay for neowin to be online, and without them you wouldn't do as well, As you stated years ago when Neowin sold out.

Why the hell are you arguing with the owner of the site? He knows more than you about the operation behind the scenes, so just shut up spreading these BS lies.

  • Like 2

It's sad how threads like this become necessary again and again, isn't it?

Indeed, on the other hand though, it's good to see they are created to get anything out of the way and not sit there in a stubborn manner and wait for the shi*storm to fade.

This ensures that Neowin gives a damn about its reputation in terms of ties and dependencies.

I can't say Neowin is overly praising Stardock. I don't read the software news about SD products too often, but when I do I never had the thought that our affiliation influences the coverage in any way.

And I've been a long standing member (even longer standing visitor, but that goes well before the incident and the transition to a LLC) and I must say I'm very confident about all this.

Just my 2?

Glassed Silver:mac

  • Like 2
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Look up 'inflation' kid. Ask an AI for the numbers between both games.
    • Google reportedly set to lose two key Gemini and DeepMind researchers to Anthropic by Karthik Mudaliar Google is reportedly preparing to lose two more prominent artificial intelligence researchers, with Gemini contributors Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel planning to join rival AI developer Anthropic. According to a report from Bloomberg, both researchers are viewed internally as important contributors to Google’s flagship Gemini model family. Adler worked on Google’s AI coding efforts, while Pritzel was involved in the process used to train AI systems. Neither company has publicly confirmed the moves. The report also does not say when the researchers will formally leave Google or what positions they will hold at Anthropic. Training a large AI model requires decisions covering its architecture, data preparation, distributed computing infrastructure, and post-training methods that shape how the finished system behaves. Researchers with experience operating at the scale of Gemini are consequently difficult to replace quickly. Both Adler and Pritzel have previously contributed to Google DeepMind’s scientific research as well. They are listed among the authors of the company’s work on expanding AlphaFold protein-structure predictions across entire proteomes, alongside AlphaFold researchers including John Jumper. The reported departures arrive shortly after another important change within Google’s Gemini organization. Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI, after returning to the search company in 2024 through its deal with Character.AI. Shazeer is particularly well known as one of the authors of the Transformer paper, whose architecture became the foundation for most modern large language models. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been recruiting recognizable figures from other leading laboratories. OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May. His move, followed by the reported recruitment of several Google researchers, suggests Anthropic is strengthening the research teams responsible for the core capabilities of future Claude models rather than concentrating solely on product and enterprise sales. The competition is complicated by the companies’ extensive commercial relationships. Anthropic competes directly with Google’s Gemini models, but it also relies on Google as an infrastructure partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded agreement with Google and Broadcom covering multiple gigawatts of next-generation Tensor Processing Unit capacity. TPUs are Google-designed accelerators used to train and run large AI models. via Bloomberg
    • This article makes my head hurt. Lots of confusing words
    • Google adds built-in computer control to Gemini 3.5 flash by Karthik Mudaliar Google has added Computer Use as a built-in tool in Gemini 3.5 Flash, giving developers a single model that can reason about a task and operate graphical interfaces across browsers, mobile devices, and desktop environments. The feature is available through the Gemini API and Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, although it remains a preview feature for now. Computer Use enables an AI agent to examine screenshots and return actions such as mouse clicks, scrolling, and keyboard input. A developer’s application must execute those actions, capture the resulting screen, and send it back to Gemini, creating a continuous loop until the task is completed. Google says the integration can be used for activities including repetitive form filling, application testing, research across multiple websites, and longer enterprise workflows. Gemini 3.5 Flash can work with browser, mobile, and desktop environments, whereas Google’s earlier standalone Computer Use model was primarily positioned around browser interaction. The main change is consolidation. Computer control was previously offered through the separate Gemini 2.5 Computer Use preview model. As Neowin reported when that model was introduced, it was designed to interpret a visual interface and generate actions without requiring a website-specific API. Google later brought Computer Use to preview versions of Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash in January 2026. The latest release now incorporates the tool into the stable Gemini 3.5 Flash model rather than requiring developers to select a specialized model solely for interface automation. Gemini 3.5 Flash itself was announced in May as Google’s latest fast model for coding and multi-step agent workflows. It supports a one-million-token input context window and up to 65,000 output tokens, along with adjustable thinking levels that let developers trade additional reasoning for lower latency and cost. Google also added that Gemini 3.5 Flash received targeted adversarial training for computer-use scenarios. The company is also offering safeguards that can require user confirmation before sensitive or irreversible actions and automatically stop a workflow when suspected prompt injection is detected. Its developer documentation describes configurable protections for areas such as financial transactions and changes to sensitive records. Google isn't the first to bring Computer Use to its platform. Anthropic has made computer control available through Claude, while OpenAI has continued improving computer-use performance in its recent models. Microsoft has also applied the concept to business workflows, including a Computer Use capability for the Researcher agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
    • After I installed KB5095093, the volume on my ARM laptop won't go above 20%. It's stuck on the hearing protection level, which is pretty much useless if you want to listen to anything. I rolled back.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
    • One Year In
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      463
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!