• TechCrunch, Thursday, September 15, 2011 12:45 PM

What does Barry Diller think of AOL dropping $30 million on TechCrunch, and then removing its founder and editor Michael Arrington? "What a good piece of business," the IAC chair and senior exec remarked during a conversation this week at the Paley Center for Media's International Council. (Diller, of course, was being entirely sarcastic.)

Where, in Diller's opinion, did AOL go wrong? First and foremost, by considering TechCrunch a "journalistic enterprise," and all that that implies from an ethical standpoint. "It's not a journalistic enterprise, TechCrunch," Biller said this week. "And so to have treated it as such is to destroy it. So now, he's gone, and now they own this thing, which has no voice. Congratulations. What a good piece of business."

Reporting on the remarks, TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid said he appreciates Diller's indictment of AOL, but not his characterization of TechCrunch. "TechCrunch," he writes, "still has some opinionated and strong voices, and we strive to commit acts of journalism as often as possible."

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