Cyberspace Article #2 - Search Engine War!

Hello once again,
This article doesn't actually have an author but does say it was published on the 10th of August, 2006 at San Francisco by The Economist. This article starts off by using a historic example of war (the time of Napoleon for history lovers, not mentioning any names like.. *cough* Lemmy *cough*) to explain the war that is going on with the business behind big search engines and website corporations like Google, MSN, Yahoo, eBay and AOL. It firstly talk about how Google has become so expansive in the mediums it uses, whether it be it's toolbar or word processor or GoogleEarth to it's new medium of web-video advertising. Google also wants to join up with Myspace, a fast-paced growing social-network website and another website called News Corporation.
As Google soaks up more than half its market, Yahoo is struggling behind in making between 60-70% of the profit Google is making for all it's use as a search engine. eBay has also had some disagreements with Google with it's indirect advertising or searching to it's website.

So MSN and Yahoo are joining up together to defend their battleground from the evil Googlemonster. They have now joined up their instant-messaging softwares to make a new "voice-chat" feature. Yahoo also joined up with eBay's PayPal system in return for advertisements on Yahoo's auction website. MSN and Yahoo also wanted another corporation to suit alliance with, and approached AOL to be a "merger". However, Google got there first and set alliane with AOL's instant messaging service. An analyst was quoted on the article explaining how "mergers" don't work on the internet anymore, because it's become so expansive. MSN and Yahoo need to be looking towards "mash-ups" known from a new forming trend on the internet called "Web 2.0".

Honestly I got a bit confused towards the end of the article because I don't completely understand what it means by "mash-ups". From a general perspective, of what this article suggests, is the major search engine's on the internet gone crazy over profits and the amount of market it is attracting. This is impacting a major part of the internet because there are billions of people that are so dependent on search engines to find what they need on the internet. Just about everyone I know uses Google and Google only as their search engine and use MSN messenger to talk to friends. I know NO ONE who uses AOL and maybe someone distant that might use Yahoo Instant Messenger. From what I know, the dependency on Google is enormous, and if something rotten goes on from this news, many people will have to face the consequences of these large corporations playing with the power of their market. If Google is to become the "All Powerful Search Engine" there will be chaos on cyberspace. I can't imagine what the consequences might be, but I can understand the enormous power from the impact of those consequences, if Google took too much of the market turf.
As one says:

"Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"