Corporate rock sucks #8: Is there no end to the desire to be a part of something bigger?
Posted on March 17th, 2006 by Andy
This week I discovered that social networking horror MySpace is owned by the atrocious News International (which already makes my love of The Simpsons, Futurama, The X-Files etc. difficult). Not, of course that I’m anywhere near being a a fan of MySpace. The very lovely Flickr jumped when Yahoo clicked their fingers, the Decemberists happily took the money that EMI/Capitol waved temptingly in front of their noses, The Body Shop (admittedly a pretty ugly global company already but at least one with a semblance of ethical integrity) have just jumped into bed L’Oreal (who have less of that ethical integrity and are part owned by Nestle who have absolutely NO ethical integrity at all).
It seems that anything small MUST aspire to be part of something bigger – you see it all the time – I’ve particularly noticed it around the Internet where Yahoo (Flickr, Upcoming, Delicious, Webjay) and Google (Deja, Blogger, Picasa) and AOL (Winamp, ICQ) are snapping up any even mildly promising operation – and it seems that the owners of these independents just swoon and take the cash as if that was the aim all along.
Posted in corporate rock sucks, idle nonsense, politics | 1 Comment »
April 18th, 2006 at 10:19 am
[...] As much as I hate the way that the big companies want to own the whole of the Internet I seem to have become some sort of Google apologist. It seems that they can do so little wrong (although the Google China censorship is a little disappointing). I love Google Mail, I love that they have made Internet advertising less intrusive and ugly, I love Google Maps and Google Earth and now I adore Google Calender – I’ve been waiting for this one for a while in the knowledge that they WILL do it and they WILL do it better than anyone else has managed an online calendar. [...]