🚀 go-pugleaf

Recently, our society seems to be bombarded with a series of corporate
mega-mergers but leading the pack would have to be the AOL-Time Warner
merger. People are worried that the Internet, the most important of
communications media, will be dominated by American content. The Net (as
it is fondly called by most) is used far and wide by people of all classes
not only to check and send e-mails but to research information, download
programs, and for many other uses.
Ideally, the Internet is supposed to be about choice, consumer sovereignty
and the ability to put one's own content online. This in no way adds up
with society's concerns about "domination" by Time-Warner/AOL. It is
highly impossible for one nation to dominate the Net while users are still
free to pick and choose content. There is so much information online that
one could easily get lost in the maze of links and hits obtained from
searches.
The vast amount of space available to content suppliers surely contradicts
the true meaning of domination. Therefore, the only meanings it could
attain in the Internet environment is the providing of more content than
others and the controlling of access routes or "portal sites" utilized by
users to get online. 
There are several ways of controlling access to the Internet. One could do
this by providing convenience, offering discounted or free access to the
Net and by giving compelling and useful content to users. The best
strategy would be to combine all these things, which is exactly what most
portal sites have been striving to do. This results in many obvious
advantages to users. I tip my hat to Alta-Vista for providing me with free
Internet access as well as very useful information. 
Even if the most-used portal sites are American, "domination" can only
occur if Net users choose to view American content over others'. I think
the whole point of the Internet is to bring millions of people together to
produce a kind of "melting pot" process. Having information about, as well
as people of various cultures and nationalities available online is what
makes the Net so versatile and interesting.