Is Google buying the 'net?

Check this out. Pretty wild, huh? I'm not sure what it all means and I certainly don't have an opinion worth a penny at the moment. It's a definite 'wait and see' thing for me.

Though, I must be one of the few people online who doesn't care that yahoo has basically bought everything. It makes sense to me. You've got a new industry - ie the Internet - that starts out as fragmented with many, many players. A highly fragmented industry with high competition will eventually lead to consolidation. The early days of the Internet had way too much competition due to low barriers to entry. There were a lot of suppliers in those days, and the buyers - ie you and me - were weak and without power. The shake-out and consolidation have ended up turning the table - theoretically, we the buyers have more power than before, though the real winners in the Internet game are the advertisers. Before, they were at the mercy of the online companies. These days, the suppliers are practically giving away their advertisement in an attempt to move excess 'inventory.'

So back to the yahoo thing. As far as I could tell, with the exception of that webring things, Yahoo's gobbling up of the internet was nothing but positive for me. Suddenly, I only needed one username and password for the majority of my online activities. In addition, my clunky geocities URL became a nice and pretty URL, thanks to Yahoo.

I also don't really care if Yahoo is spying on me. I did object to their TOS from a few years back when they claimed to own the content on Geocities websites indefinitely. But in general, Yahoo's 'watching' of me doesn't bother me in any way.

I'm a marketer, so it could be that my view on this subject is skewed. I believe that better information leads to better marketing and better products. After all, if Yahoo doesn't know what I'm doing and how I'm doing, how is it going to make itself better for me?

In addition, Yahoo provides me services for free. I'm not paying for either of my two Geocities websites nor for any of a myriad of Yahoo email accounts of Yahoogroups. I play Literati for free and I get to check my television listings and get airfares for absolutely no charge. So Yahoo wants to put a cookie on my computer to see what I do and where I go, so really, why should I complain? Especially when it's information in aggregate?

I think I give up a reasonable amount of privacy when I get online. I mask a bunch of information about yours truly to the best of my ability, but I also know that I'm tracked regardless of where I go. I could prevent that by using a proxy service and by turning off the cookies in my browser. The first I tried and it worked to an extent, and the second is too much work - cookies, I have to say, make my life a heck of a lot easier.

Of course, I don't want to see advertisements online and I definitely don't need any more spam or direct mail and that's another rant entirely, and I've already gone way off topic as it is.

But what I really meant to say is, can anyone else see the Internet being run entirely by Google one day?