Many complain about the merging of companies and technologies like Microsoft buying a stake in Apple or a merging of phone companies and their mobile technologies and customers. Well that of course is the evolution of corporate growth. There are rule makers and rule breakers and innovation and disruption.

Communication is in fact one of the quintessential parts of any civilization and as the world becomes closer together the merging of technologies is a good thing, as it helps the market place find a standard so we are all on the same page, world wide. This is a benefit of capitalism and one of its pluses.

Standardization of technologies, language, systems, is good. Competition is good too, combining them and letting the strongest survive is applying evolutionary theory to business. That is a good thing. Mankind seems to do well when his systems and designs mimic what nature has taught us.

If you look at Beta and VHS in hindsight, although Beta was a better technology, consumers and citizens win in the end thru the standardization. Likewise we all won, when Microsoft became the winner in the office suite market, meaning I can send you a file and you can read it because we are sync'ed up using the same technology, as it is all standardized. So, before we complain about such things, we should also consider all the benefits. Think on this in 2006.