You sound like you experienced a sudden, total failure of all your VT bookmarks, but that wasn't my experience.
... my real impetus for ditching CNET was their malware browser toolbar ...
No, I wasn’t referring to original VT software page links, but to the main VT portal. Since that was taken down after CNet’s takeover, ‘versiontracker.com’ autoforwarded to CNet’s download.com. Again, I’m talking about the respective
main page(s) here. Since last July versiontracker.com
dead-ends, but the
domain still exists, as may various software links.
As I’m sure you know, the adware you referred to was discussed here at several occasions, including the threads
Issues with MacUpdate and CNet's Download.com and
Oh, CNet, how low can you go? For those readers who aren’t familiar with this issue, they merit revisiting, because CNet still distributes this crap.