iblaine - 5:39 am on Dec 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

You are correct I am kidding. However, it won't be long before Google begins to monetive Froogle and position it as a shopping portal against the likes of Shopping.com, NextTag, BizRate, et al. Doing so will only cause these shopping engine giants to spend more $ on adwords in order to get more traffic.

Did you also here about catalogs.google.com? Apparently they pay some unlucky sole to index all of the various catalog oriented sites. Why? Keeping wiht Serge theme to be the organizer of information.

If Google wants to organize something, they should start with my wife's check book.

Prediction for 2004 - Google and eBay merge to form the defacto portal for internet users. Users will be able to do searches from Google that take them directly into eBay. To counter this move Yahoo acquires Amazon and integrates it with Yahoo! Shopping.

MSN then buys Shopping.com.

The end result is that by 2005 there are just 3 primary network channels on the Internet Yahoo, MSN, Google. Everything else is just noise.

Likewise the three major neyworks align themselves with the intyernet portals. NBC = MSN, ABC = Yahoo, CBS = Google. Fox and Turner fealing left out of the equation go after who ever is left and compete as fringe players.

With broadband coming and the advent of PRTV the major TV networks will need to take over internet advertsing.

How do you like them apples?