IP: Assimilating the Web

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 23:07:57 -0700
> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ultradevices com>
>
> Assimilating the Web
> Like "Star Trek's" all-powerful Borg, AOL and Microsoft are determined
> to crush the spirit of online independence. Is resistance futile?
>
> By Scott Rosenberg
>
> June 26, 2001 | There are moments, these days, when I sit at my desk,
> watching the spam pour into my in box, and think, Well, we did it!  We
> built the Internet and created the most efficient means in human
> history for delivering penis enlargement pitches and come-ons from
> Nigerian scam artists.
>
> As spam keeps multiplying, it reminds us of the persistence of the
> original nightmare of the Net as a borderless, centerless anarchy -- a
> medium in which anyone is free to tell outrageous lies or steal
> collective resources because, hey, who can stop them? Each new spam is
> an irritating reminder: This network is out of control.
>
> Except. A couple of weeks ago, in between the spammed "Become your own
> boss!" and "herbal Viagra" offers, I received a cluster of real e-mail
> from friends and colleagues, all pointing to the same news blip: "Four
> Web sites," the headlines read, "control half of surfing time."
>
> My God! Talk about media concentration! Has the entire Web really come
> down to America Online, Microsoft, Yahoo and Napster?
>
> Of course, look a little more closely at that report and you find all
> sorts of holes. For starters, there's the notoriously inaccurate
> methodology of the survey takers at Jupiter Media Metrix. Then there's
> the definitions of all these terms -- "site," "surfing," "control."
> Does AOL "control" the time that its users are sending e-mail? Are
> Napster users "surfing" when they're trading music files? What idiot
> assembled this ludicrous data, anyway?
>
> Still, the sound bite touched a nerve because -- whatever the flaws in
> Jupiter's study -- we know in our guts that control of the Web is
> concentrating at an alarming rate. Sure, it's still possible for
> anyone to put up a Web site.  But as the carcasses of independent Web
> start-ups litter the landscape, the once-wild online free-for-all is
> rapidly devolving into a showdown between AOL and Microsoft. AOL
> controls the subscriber lists and a huge chunk of the content;
> Microsoft controls the consumer operating system and browser. Anarchy?
> No way -- this is a bipolar Cold War, waged with software standards
> and lawsuits and marketing blitzes.
>
>
> In fact, the Web today, in this grim summer of 2001 -- seven long
> years after its first flush of popularity -- faces a paradoxical and
> perplexing impasse. It's still too anarchic to be made a completely
> smooth, convenient, ready-for-prime-time experience; but it's also
> losing the vital ferment of its "let a hundred flowers bloom" youth to
> the gray monotony of corporate control.
>
> We're reaping the worst of both worlds, networked chaos and
> monopolistic consolidation. The least common denominator of individual
> behavior multiplies, while the least common denominator of mass taste
> prevails.
>
> In other words, we're screwed.
>
> <snip>
>
> http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/26/locking_up_the_web/index.html



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