What a troll. And no I don't mean you bearwithclaws I mean 37 Signals. Cherry picking two failed acquisitions to support your knee-jerk reaction to this deal is just lazy. I don't think I need to point out that AOL has done just this before (bought popular blogs) with great success. The shot at AOL's 'age' is just icing on this lame attempt at getting some free press cake.
Congratulation to the TechCrunch team; my condolences to TechCrunch.
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2565-acquisition-condolences