So earlier today Jacob sent me a list of the top 10 Internet sites according to Alexa. here is the list:

Top Sites

1. Yahoo!
2. Microsoft Network
3. Google
4. YouTube
5. Myspace
6. Baidu.com
7. Windows Live
8. Orkut.com
9. ???
10. Yahoo!????

As you can see there are quite a few Google, yahoo and Microsoft controlled sites - with Myspace and qq being the only non federated sites in the top 10. This is interesting because it really outlines who actually runs the Internet. So the score is as follows:

Number of top ten sites:

• Google: 4 (Google, Orkut, YouTube and 2% of Baidu)
• yahoo: 2 (yahoo and yahoo.co.jp)
• Microsoft: 2  (MSN and live.com)

I think it is very interesting the amount of power that a company like Google has over the Internet. I would argue that even though Microsoft seems to have market share and momentum in the OS market and is able to disseminate product more than any other software company, Google is probably more able to affect change on a global level based on the level of penetration they have into being identified as the Internet itself.

I think that cringely is probably correct in his media and Google Internet 3 talks. Weird and scary. oh yea. and cool.