Legal Research

Is everyone in play?

This morning Reuters is reporting that TimeWarner is seeking to strike a deal with either Yahoo or Microsoft for AOL. (Yep, they're dancing with two partners.) The article says that the discussions "have taken on new urgency ahead of Yahoo's Aug 1 shareholders meeting." So the next two weeks are going to be interesting.

What does this have to do with libraries? I watch this stuff because there are huge impacts on the community and information ecology when the big players involved affect nearly every major web experience that our users have. For example, Congressional testimony this week says that a Google/Yahoo alliance would control 90%+ of the search and ad market. MS has the majority of desktops. AOL owns Bebo and Microsoft has an investment in Facebook and Murdoch owns MySpace - all of which show glimpses of the future of our technology and social environment tools. What often goes unsaid in these articles are other assets like Yahoo's delicious and Flickr as well as all the companies' involvement in the development of the Cloud. .And, of course, if you follow the money, some estimates say that over 80% of the ad opportuity is there and not in search. It's a real soup right now and it affects our strategies big time.

This is getting so interesting. Will libraries have a big opportunity to create a third way or will we merely play along with the rules driven by the ad supported tools?

The next Congress (and indeed governments and parliaments around the world) are going to be very busy figuring this one out.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on July 16, 2008 (boomark / email).