Game Over!

Came across an article by Paul Cringley who figures Google are out to control the internet. In his words, "the game was over before most of us even knew there WAS a game".

I had put up an earlier post on Google. Sad thing is that, like most people, I don’t at this point in time really care who owns and controls the internet. Hence my extensive use of google's cache on this blog.

Maybe in a few years when the effects of such dominance truly begin to affect my daily life and intrude on my personal space, will I belatedly realise the danger of the apathy with which I currently view the present developments.

According to Cringle:

Seeing Google as their only alternative to bankruptcy, the ISPs will all sign on, and in doing so will transfer most of their subscriber value to Google, which will act as a huge proxy server for the Internet. We won't know if we're accessing the Internet or Google and for all practical purposes it won't matter. Google will become our phone company, our cable company, our stereo system and our digital video recorder. Soon we won't be able to live without Google, which will have marginalized the ISPs and assumed most of the market capitalization of all the service providers it has undermined -- about $1 trillion in all -- which places today's $500 Google share price about eight times too low.

It's a grand plan, but can Google pull it off? Yes they can.