IBM selling The Weather Channel and the rest of its weather business

3 years ago by L4sBot to c/technology

IBM selling The Weather Channel and the rest of its weather business::IBM will sell The Weather Company to Francisco Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm, for an undisclosed sum, it announced Tuesday.

LEDZeppelin 187 points 3 years ago

In before a fascist wannabe billionaire buys the weather channel just to destroy any credibility it has and hijack the climate change debate. Even change the name of weather channel to something like “Y”.

Let the enshittification begin.

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Snowyday 61 points 3 years ago

You reminded me of this story from 2018 when the Trump team tried to put someone in charge of government weather data so that they could shutdown free public access, allowing private companies to use it and commercialize it

“ One particularly alarming thread explored in Lewis’s reporting follows the ongoing efforts of Barry Myers, the chief executive of AccuWeather and Trump’s pick to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to privatize the agency’s practice of collecting and analyzing data that helps generate weather warnings meant to keep all of us, and not just those who can pay for it, safe.”

https://www.vulture.com/...

https://qz.com/...

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cheese_greater 16 points 3 years ago

God he sucks. Why don't we do private firefighters and police while we're at it.

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T156 1 point 3 years ago

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PrincessLeiasCat 39 points 3 years ago

Steve Bannon is sadly already ahead of you:

The two networks’ shared ownership has alarmed some meteorologists, who say that WeatherNation is helping to legitimize the extreme viewpoints aired on Real America’s Voice, occasionally sharing its forecasts on the political network; at times the networks feature the same advertisers. These critics also argue that in its own coverage, WeatherNation fosters climate change skepticism by shunning any mention of the established links between human-driven climate warming and the disasters the channel covers, thus discouraging viewers from considering the consequences of climate change

https://www.washingtonpost.com/...

If paywall:

https://web.archive.org/...

Another article with tons of linked sources: https://checkmyads.org/...

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Buelldozer 1 point 3 years ago

I've watched WN on a regular basis since 2014. That's the year I cut cable and WN was the only streaming option I could find. I was also sick of The Weather Channel and the non-stop drama being pumped out of their studios.

WN may or may not be linked with RAV / Steve Bannon but I simply don't care. They do weather and that's it. It's on when I want (always), gives reasonably accurate predictions, and there is zero political BS or unnecessary drama.

The article has it correct, the WN is basically a modernized version of TWC from two decades ago and that's all I need / want it to be.

We can talk about GCC, I'm no denier, but I don't need to be having that conversation while I'm trying to find out what today's weather is going to be. If refusing to put GCC coverage front and center is wrong then every weather app on every smartphone in America is guilty of the same thing.

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SubArcticTundra 17 points 3 years ago

He'll probably rename it to 🌦️

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ech0 17 points 3 years ago

*Databases crash noises

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Mateoto 8 points 3 years ago

This timeline is disturbingly absurd, making it increasingly likely that we could indeed face such a situation.

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DoomBot5 4 points 3 years ago

Too late, it's been shit for years now.

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nymwit 2 points 3 years ago

The Weather Channel tv channel isn't owned by IBM and isn't part of this deal

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adenoid 60 points 3 years ago

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kmkz_ninja 33 points 3 years ago

That's incredible. Both of those apps INSTANTLY became so much worse after they were bought out.

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funkless_eck 1 point 3 years ago

plus ça change with software disaster capitalism as always

there'll always be another app to ruin to make a quick buck

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kmkz_ninja 1 point 3 years ago

There's always blood to squeese.

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mint_tamas 2 points 3 years ago

LogMeIn has way more free offerings now than just a couple of years ago. Source: used to work at LogMeIn. You are talking out of your ass.

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DragonTypeWyvern 1 point 3 years ago

Maybe they just think you did a bad job...

(That's a joke)

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mint_tamas 2 points 3 years ago

I don’t mind. but I’m pretty sure they are conflating two entirely different events: one was the almost complete removal of the free tier of the original LogMeIn, which at this point happened probably 10 years ago? LogMeIn (now GoTo) was privatized and sold two-ish years ago, maybe less.

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adenoid 2 points 3 years ago

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infyrin 2 points 3 years ago

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ironcrotch 56 points 3 years ago

I used to love Weather Underground but stopped using it once The Weather Channel took over but crazy that IBM own that, what an odd acquisition.

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Ejh3k 12 points 3 years ago

I still use it, mostly because I've been using them for nearly two decades and they've been the most consistently accurate in forecasting for my area.

But since the IBM acquisition, the app has been so slow to load.

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Patches 5 points 3 years ago

Just use the National Weather Service. It is where they get all of their data. They just bundle it up and sell it.

https://forecast.weather.gov/...

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KrapKake 2 points 3 years ago

The thing about weather underground is that it's the only way to see weather data online from my (and others) personal weather station. As far as I know anyway, not sure if there's an alternative.

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Ejh3k 2 points 3 years ago

That's my second weather screen when I'm at a computer.

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vanontom 1 point 3 years ago

I used to love the WU app, it was beautiful and accurate. A few years ago I started noticing more and more puzzling changes, before I realized IBM had purchased them. They ruined an incredible app. Seems like they just outsourced development to lowest international bidder.

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jet 55 points 3 years ago

Why on earth did IBM buy the weather channel?

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foggy 58 points 3 years ago

Data, probably.

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nymwit 2 points 3 years ago

BM planned to leverage its Watson technology as part of the acquisition, foreseeing its use for weather analytics and predictions. The deal, which closed the following January,[27] does not include the Weather Channel itself, which remained owned by the Bain/Blackstone/NBCUniversal consortium, and entered into a long-term licensing agreement with IBM for use of its weather data and "The Weather Channel" name and branding

wikipedia page for The Weather Channel

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piecat 1 point 3 years ago

A good way to get GPS data. You "need" gps if you want your phone to show "weather near you"

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DigitalFrank 48 points 3 years ago

TIL IBM owns the Weather Channel.

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nymwit 4 points 3 years ago

Only the mobile app. They don't own the tv channel.

IBM planned to leverage its Watson technology as part of the acquisition, foreseeing its use for weather analytics and predictions. The deal, which closed the following January,[27] does not include the Weather Channel itself, which remained owned by the Bain/Blackstone/NBCUniversal consortium, and entered into a long-term licensing agreement with IBM for use of its weather data and "The Weather Channel" name and branding

Wikipedia page for The Weather Channel

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captainlezbian 41 points 3 years ago

Weather that is a good decision or not remains to be seen

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drexy_rexy 19 points 3 years ago

What is your forecast about it?

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figjam 15 points 3 years ago

Hazy.

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Cataphract 5 points 3 years ago

Hail of a good pun line going on.

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FlyingSquid 27 points 3 years ago

Please don't make Weather Underground shitty. It's the only weather website that gives accurate information around here.

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unwillingsomnambulist 22 points 3 years ago

Hate to tell you this, but it’s been shitty since the NEXRAD feeds broke and they never bothered to fix ‘em.

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FlyingSquid 4 points 3 years ago

Maybe for you, but all the other weather websites I've tried are wrong. Even DarkSky was wrong half the time. It said sunny skies when we were in the middle of a blizzard once. I don't know, maybe there's something weird about where I am.

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unwillingsomnambulist 9 points 3 years ago

I had a similar experience with Dark Sky, but Weather Underground was always great. The weird part of it is that I’m near Chicago, where the NWS office got trashed for their awful handling of the forecast and response to the storms that led to the Plainfield F5 in 1990 - bad radar was often cited as a reason for that response, so NEXRAD especially has been key to NWS’s improvement here.

It’s www.weather.gov/lot for me now.

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FlyingSquid 5 points 3 years ago

Oh wow, weather.gov looks really nice these days. It used to be bare bones. I may use it from now on, thanks!

Edit: The only thing I don't like is I can't see where it has the current heat index.

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Elegast 3 points 3 years ago

If only their UI wasn't so trash I'd only ever use weather.gov

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doubletwist 16 points 3 years ago

They've been shitty since TWC bought them. Maybe a little before when they killed their old web interface which was informative and fast and replaced it with a new design that was difficult to read information, and worst of all, slow as fuck. That's about when I stopped subscribing.

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const_void 1 point 3 years ago

worst of all, slow as fuck.

So true. Waiting 30 seconds to see the temperature is ridiculous.

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over_clox -1 points 3 years ago

It takes all of 2 seconds to open the door. Guess what? The temperature is hot.

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const_void 1 point 3 years ago

Because it's so easy to crack the door when you're 20 stories up...

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worsedoughnut 19 points 3 years ago

Maybe the Wunderground KDE plugin will be revived now that IBM isn't the one handing out API keys...

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infyrin 18 points 3 years ago

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BlackSpasmodic 15 points 3 years ago

Today I learned that IBM is still a major thing

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ABeeinSpace 23 points 3 years ago

IBM will still sell you a brand new, updated mainframe in 2023.

They’re also in the open source software space (IBM owns Red Hat, a software company that has a lot of projects for Linux. Red Hat has their own Linux distro too)

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umami_wasbi 11 points 3 years ago

Which threats users to had their subscription cancelled when they share the source code according to GPL.

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ABeeinSpace 9 points 3 years ago

Yeah. I agree with ya there, Red Hat screwed over Alma and Rocky with that decision. I can see the utility of those two distros for testing before committing to RHEL.

Plus, if Oracle has room to try to be the “good guys”, you’ve really screwed up

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ieatpillowtags 1 point 3 years ago

Nobody was “testing” rhel by using Rocky or Alma, they just didn’t want to pay for it. I mean you can test actual rhel for free!

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hglman 18 points 3 years ago

We did away with that pesky business failures. Now all corporate are eternal.

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agent_flounder 4 points 3 years ago

I knew they were a thing because I run into them in IT from time to time... but had no idea they owned the weather channel. Wild.

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stappern 4 points 3 years ago

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JJROKCZ 3 points 3 years ago

I work with their iseries servers daily, they are very much still a thing

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ikidd 15 points 3 years ago

Cool, could they sell Redhat to someone not actively evil, and fuck right off now?

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finickydesert 11 points 3 years ago

Does anyone know of a great alternative weather app?

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PlutoniumAcid 7 points 3 years ago

Windy

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sit_up_straight 2 points 3 years ago

i found SimpleWeather recently https://play.google.com/... and like it a lot, though i had to change the default weather provider to get accurate data for my area

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CoderKat 2 points 3 years ago

I've recently switched to Weawow and it's great! Really high quality widgets and a really powerful notification area feature.

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CluckN -13 points 3 years ago

Going outside

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ggppjj 11 points 3 years ago

Doesn't help me see what the weather will be like in a few hours or days from now, which is the whole point of forecasting.

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CluckN 6 points 3 years ago

Pshh, my uncle could feel a storm coming with just a feeling in his bad knee.

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ggppjj 6 points 3 years ago

So do I just call him or

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to55 7 points 3 years ago

Makes sense. Now they can focus more on their core business. Google recently sold it’s domain registry, I think it might be the same thing.

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unwillingsomnambulist 10 points 3 years ago

I think it’s fair to look at IBM with a more cynical eye. Historically it’s been “acquire, way you’ll make no changes, wait a bit, make changes that piss off 80% of your customer base.” Somewhere in there is a “reduce customer service effectiveness” step that is distinct from “make changes.”

After that it’s either “sell it off to the highest bidder” or “keep at it because who else are the customers gonna use?”

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umami_wasbi 6 points 3 years ago

It's a bummer that Google sold it's registry to GoDaddySquarespace.

EDIT: seems like I remember it incorrectly

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lud 2 points 3 years ago

They sold it to Squarespace.

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fmstrat 4 points 3 years ago

I hear this a lot, but every company I've been a part of that did it seemed to be a bad idea. If a division makes money, the only reason to sell is because you believe the investment in that division can be used to make more money (for less). Getting rid of a profitable entity is usually greed based.

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BlackSpasmodic 7 points 3 years ago

It's corporate-speak that means nothing. The same company "focused on it's core business" today will buy something unrelated sometime later and say it's "poised for growth in a growing market".

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Arsenal4ever 5 points 3 years ago

TIL IBM owned the weather app.

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UsernameIsTooLon 1 point 3 years ago

If you have The Weather App, the IBM logo is on the splash screen every first launch.

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Arsenal4ever 1 point 3 years ago

Ah. I guess I just use the one that comes with my iPhone.

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Copernican 2 points 3 years ago

But that is where I get all the news I need.

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