Is the internet actually shrinking?

Ok so I've been in IM for 20 years and I've seen a lot come and go. Now before you shout me down and say that of course the internet is growing, let me explain what I mean.

Using one example - Google. Have you noticed there used to be a Google Video search on their homepage that has now been replaced by Youtube? Yes the video search is still there but it's hidden at the bottom of the drop-down list meaning 99% of people now searching for video on Google get Youtube results. Obviously Google owns Youtube so you can understand their reasons for doing so, but it doesn't help the video site owners (who's visitor numbers have dropped significantly since Google moved the Video option).

Because of this, the Google machine is cornering the market on video. Heck even the video search results show 80% Youtube results.

The market is shrinking as monopolies grow, Google is positioning itself as the only company that matters when it comes to searching. They are leveraging their position as the number 1 search engine to diversify and promote their diversification.

Another example is Amazon. They are the Google of online shopping, and they have leveraged their position to now become the number 1 seller of digital ebooks (outselling actual books).

So my theory is that while there are now more and more websites, and more and more people accessing the internet, the internet itself is actually being monopolized by a select few (Google, Amazon, Apple (for music) and Facebook (for social networking)) and I believe we will see an increase in that over the next few years. Right now, you could live your life online visiting no more than those four sites.

My suggestion would be to get on board.

Any thoughts?

 

Totally agree with Peon's points!
I would like to share with you this: Youtube announced in Dec 2011 that it logged 1 trillion hits in 2011 and predicted that soon 90% of web traffic will be video.
So if you want to success in IM in this century, you have to master video marketing....

 

Adult pretty much, there wasn't much to do back then. I sold a niche adult website to a network and cashed in pretty big.

 

I had 8 websites when I sold the first one

 

Certainly not websites as we know them today, more like newsgroups now. We're talking in the age of dial-up DOS and Windows 3.1 so images used to take an age to load, so there was very little in the way of text, more like an image repository

 

I sad a few years back Google will rule the world they are conquering it step by step