Over at Salon.com, Scott Rosenberg announces,"We're screwed!"

So are we screwed? Are Microsoft, AOL, Napster and Yahoo fated to rule the web?

One thing is for sure, corporations will do whatever they think will improve their bottom line, and if they come to rule the Net, then the only content out there will be content that turns a profit. But maybe things aren't as bleak as they seem. The panic over the "Big 4" comes about from a Jupiter survey that announces that these four companies control half our surfing time. But as Scott points out, Jupiter's definition of "control" is shakey at best. And there may be a bigger flaw in the argument than that. Maybe control isn't the best way or only way to measure the effectiveness of the web. If I suddenly found out that readers of tony.dowler.com spent half their time on my site, I'd be mightily dismayed. The goal of a blog isn't to attract and keep, it's to form connections and encourage people to surf through. Think about it. How many people visit usr/bin/girl in a day. Is Zannah's site somehow not influential if these people happen to click a link and move on? At least one article (Brill's Content) has suggested that the biggies will ultimately fail until they learn the lesson of the small portal: it's not about control, it's about relevance.

Don't be fooled into using business measures for things non-business, it is as foolish as measuring the flow of a river with a yardstick.