What are they up to? Exciting times on the internet

So many mergers and strange alliances going on right now it's hard to figure out what this really means to us, the end users...

Or what exactly is in it for the parties involved..
Not that the ultimate answer isn't always "MONEY. CASH MONEY.", but how exactly they plan to make the money off these deals, and why they're doing it now is what's confusing even the "Experts" lately.

I've seen lots of speculation and many rumors treated as "News" lately and am left feeling that very few people really know what's up.

First we have the very odd link-up of Yahoo and MSN's IM clients.
Actually, it shouldn't be odd, it makes sense from an end user perspective, but MSN and Yahoo haven't traditionally been the best of friends.
(For a bit more on this story)

Sure, at one point their search engines were both supplied by Inktomi, which Yahoo then dropped for Google, which it then dropped and bought Inktomi which MSN was using until MSN dropped it for their own (still kind of stinky) MSN bot...

So many hook-ups and dumpings it's hard to tell who will end up with whom next.
Strange bedfellows indeed, like a Search Engine / Internet soap opera, and all they're missing is the glasses of water thrown in their scorned ex's face..

Here's another strange-but-not-really hook-up: Paypal buying up VeriSign's payment processing division.
(For a little more on that)

Could it be *somebody* is quaking at the idea of this top secret but not-so-secret alleged Google project??

Magic 8-ball says "Could be".

Just last month, we heard rumors of an MSN/AOL hook-up as well with speculations and promises of topping Yahoo's page views, but wait!

This week's really hot topic is a potential mating of Google and AOL.
AOL still uses Google as a back-end search supplier so this kind of makes sense, that these two would get together, but I'm wondering what's really at stake here..

Is this a VoIP battle?
A Search Engine battle?
Does Google just want AOL for it's browser?


For answers to these questions and more, tune in to your internet because these are the dazed of our lives...

;)