Doc Searls: Business as Morality reprints an email written by Doc Searls discussing business morality. As with most of Doc’s writing it is worth reading. However, I would like to draw a little attention to one of the comments posted in response. It starts with the text “Wake the dragon”. This comment discusses the effects of the enormous cost reductions that the Internet has brought to content creation and distribution. The main idea is that the cost of content creation and distribution has been reduced to the point where content is being created without a profit motivation. This leads to a situation where for-profit companies must compete with entities who do not need to make money.
The main difference in the scenario above [media consolidation] and the current one that exist in the internet business sector is that the old scenario of market domination, and consolidation has been super imposed as a belief model in an space that it will not fit.
They [newspapers regarding on-line classified ads] also viewed the internet in an old world economic framework that postulates that business are only created and survive when revenue can be generated that makes the endeavor profitable.