Earlier this morning CNET posted a big scoop: gadgetmaker LG had acquired WebOS from Hewlett Packard, and was going to use the smartphone operating system in TVs.

WebOS was the operating system that powered the Palm Pre, which came out a few years ago, and was the first mobile operating system that pundits compared favorably to Apple's iOS.

But then, CNET pulled its story off the Internet.

So what's going on?

Was CNET's story correct?

Here are the facts:

  • Yes, the news is correct. Over at All Things D, Ina Fried has reported the same news, with a note at the bottom: "CNET reported the news on Monday morning, ahead of what was expected to be an official announcement later in the day. An LG spokesman wasn’t immediately prepared to discuss the deal, but the details appear to be correct."
  • The story seems to be down because CNET broke an "embargo."  An embargo is where a company will tell a journalist news prior to an announcement, so long as the journalist agrees to hold the news until an agreed-upon moment. Companies do this so that they can tell lots of journalists about their news. Journalist agree to embargos because … well, there's no good reason. Anyway, a source at one of CNET's competitors tells us that there was an embargo on this story. What seems to have happened is, CNET broke its agreement by (accidentally?) publishing early, panicked, and took down its story. 

We've pinged HP, LG, and CNET and update this story when we hear back.

Here's a cached version of the CNET story >>