Writes Michael Wolff of New York Magazine: "I think it's dead. I think it's over with; it's gone. There is no long-term prognosis. The patient has died. There is no future." That's the Web as a content medium he's talking about.

What bothers me about Wolff's comments is that he, and many others, are now running to the other side of the boat and stating that there aren't any Internet business models that will work. That seems just as wrong as suggesting that everything will work, which was how things seemed two years ago.

Typically with a new medium there is a period of wild experimentation before a business model of choice is applied. I don't think we're going to see the exact same thing with the Internet because it is more of a carrier than a medium. Nonetheless, what is happening now, with companies and business models failing, is what happens.

Don't forget that there are companies that either are, or can, make money on the Web, not the least of which are Yahoo, eBay and Amazon. I don't think that anyone should be suprised to see 80-90% of the Web-based media businesses that existed last year to be gone by 2003.

The Internet is far from dead and far from being in some sort of "final" form. If we see real broadband to the curb, the whole equation changes again... though I don't know if broadband will ever hit in the way that a lot of people want it to, as essentially an unlimited pipe that can deliver full motion, full screen video and so on, on-demand.

As a side note, I'm surprised that Wolff talks about a "three-network model" and "90-plus percent share of the market" for the networks. Maybe he is talking about the network mindset here, but the networks haven't had 90% of viewing for many many years now.