Download Squad concentrated more on tech and less on non-tech related news like Lifehacker does. The blog was on my daily reading schedule and I came to enjoy the posts of many of the blog’s regular authors.

It was also often an interesting race to get the news out before they did, which I more often than not did not succeed in.

But it is not only the Download Squad website that will be discontinued, Switched.com will be discontinued as well. The site has an Alexa rank of sub 4000 which is an indicator for lots and lots of traffic.

You may remember that AOL moved the Download Squad from their original domain name to a Switched.com subdomain. That move in itself felt strange at that time but it was better than losing the site completely.

It is not clear why the sites have been closed, the post over at the Download Squad does not reveal a single reason.

The most likely reason is that the advertising revenue of the sites did not match the exceptions of the shareholders.
Could also have something to do with a change in management after the Huffington Post aquisition. But those are just guesses, no one knows and it is likely staying that way.

What stands is that this is a sad day for tech interested users like me, and many of you. Goodbye Download Squad, many of us will miss you in the year’s to come.

While weekends were a bit slow they usually saw a few posts from the dedicated staff. I was a bit worried about the website and emailed Brad who said that the could not speak about it. I did some research on my own and it seems that AOL has told some bloggers, among them the bloggers of the Download Squad, to hold off for the month in what seems an effort to cut costs.

I’m not sure why AOL would make them hold off in first place because I know that the bloggers were paid on a per article base which should not be a problem for a multi-billion Dollar company like AOL.

Apparently though I’m wrong. AOL is cutting costs and trying to sell some properties like XDrive or Bluestring.

While all news articles speak of holding off until the end of the month none know for sure what is going to happen on August, 1st. Will they start blogging again or will this be the end of the Download Squad?

Meanwhile AOL is also telling some bloggers who contribute to its Weblogs group to cut back or to halt writing for the rest of the month. Contributors to the DownloadSquad have been told to hold off, while The Unofficial Apple Weblog will cut back to a couple per day. DIY Life will go on hiatus.

• More AOL Cost-Cutting: Dumping Properties; Cutting Back On Blogs
• AOL Cutting Costs Again…But No Firings!
• AOL Realizes Bloggers Will Work For Free; Stops Paying Them

I would like to analyze the blog for a bit. I do not know the real traffic statistics for the download squad but they surely are above my own here at Ghacks. A few indicators are Alexa, Comcast and others and although they are not accurate they seem to suggest roughly twice the amount of traffic that my site gets.

That would be between 1.5 and 2 million unique visitors per month for the Download Squad. If proper advertisement would be added to that website they could probably rake in between $15K-20K per month from that website alone which would obviously be more than enough to pay Brad and his team. Those $15K-20K are based on free advertising opportunities and no special deals like high paying CPM campaigns that are running on the whole blog network. Could very well be much more if those were included.

Heck I would buy that website if I would have the money to do so if Brad and his team would continue writing for it..

Let’s hope for the best and pray that the Download Squad will be back in full strength in August.