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Barry McGhee, General Manager of CBS Interactive in Australia told iTWire that it woud be inaccurate to portray the move as ZDNet Australia shutting its doors.
He said that the media group would not be reducing staff in Australia.
"There's no zdnet.com.au but that's got no bearing on local content," McGhee said.
"The back-end infrastructure was different and the sites were not running on the same servers. We looked at the numbers and quite a lot of Australians are going to the dot com site. We felt it would be better to have everything at the one destination. You can now find the Australian site on the menu at the top left of the page."
Subscribers to ZDNet Australia newsletters will also find that they will no longer be subscribed, according to ZDNet. However, McGhee said that if they subscribe again to the dot com site, they will still be able to receive Australian newsletters.
The following is a letter received by an iTWire staffer from ZDNet:
"Dear ZDNet member,
Thank you for your continued loyalty as a ZDNet member. I am writing to let you know about some exciting changes to ZDNet which will impact your current membership.
We are pleased to announce that ZDNet.com is merging with its sister sites ZDNet UK, ZDNet Asia and ZDNet Australia. The joining of these four sites means that all of our members will benefit from immediate access to valuable content and resources from around the globe, connecting you with an even larger pool of industry experts and peers.
What does this mean for you? Our records show that you are already a member of ZDNet.com. This means in future you will need to use your existing ZDNet.com login details to access the site.
What happens to your newsletter subscriptions? Your ZDNet newsletter subscriptions have not been transferred to ZDNet.com, although your subscriptions to US newsletters remain unchanged. To view a full list of the newsletters we now have on offer click here, or alternatively log in to your account to manage your subscriptions. The great news is that these will now cover even more news and analysis, created by our global editorial team 24/7."
