January 14, 2000
Web posted at: 12:36 PM EST (1736 GMT)

By D. Ian Hopper
CNN Interactive Technology Editor

(CNN) -- One of the largest technology-based Web destination networks went down Friday morning, leaving the majority of ZDNet Web sites unreachable by Internet users.

At 9:13 a.m. EST, according to ZDNet, 70 percent of the company's Web content could not be accessed. A few sites, including the company site zd.com and gaming site Gamespot.com, were still available.

ZDNet technicians were still working on the problem as of 12:15 p.m. EST. The issue, they said, was network-based.

"We're working diligently with all third-party vendors that play a role in the network engineering aspects of the ZDNet site to resolve it quickly," Ziff-Davis spokesperson Martha Papalia said in a statement. "We haven't had an outage like this for more than 2 years. We apologize to our visitors and customers for the inconvenience."

Based in San Francisco, ZDNet is owned by Ziff-Davis, in turn owned by Japan-based Softbank. ZDNet operates 29 sites in 20 countries. Ziff-Davis recently sold its extensive print publishing holdings, which include PC Magazine, Computer Gaming World and PC WEEK, to an investment firm.