All web sites are not alike. All web sites have the potential to be alike due to the ability to incorporate the same features, but when they don't they're not. It's like saying that all modes of transportation are the same because they'll get you to your destination. "Any mode of transportation can get you from point A to point B! A skateboard is the same as a sports car!"
All Web sites are alike. Regardless of their owners, they can all do the same set of things. In that fact lies the profound crisis facing all aspects of the media industry. It doesn't matter whether a Web site's owner once focused on publishing newspapers or magazines, broadcasting television or radio, making music or producing movies, or even selling soft drinks. Any Web site can host text, audio and video, it can facilitate connections and communication between users, and it can enable those users to create and display their own text, audio or video.
I understand the article's intent, but points deducted for reducing all sites to an indistinguishable pulp of duplicate features.
Whew! I'm just glad it wasn't my blog! :D
My guess is that he was just under deadline to submit a piece and decided to submit a fictional story; when in doubt, vomit on paper and press print.
Seriously though, the general populus doesn't always understand that articles aren't necessarily factual; they're usually written by "reporters", offering up the information as they understand it. In this particular instance, the material clearly was not understood.
I think that there is a bigger problem behind this article, and that problem is that today so much companies, and media are not exceptions, don't know exactly which is their bussiness.
Some times, a company bussiness and were they make money are diferent things, and they need to be. A media company, for instance, usually make money in advertising, but their bussiness is something else (information, entertainment, etc).
This is easy to forget, and most company today are more focused in their return, their profit, than in their job, in their bussiness.
For instance, in the good side, do you know which is McDonalds job? And their assets, here truly is their profit? Yes, their job is hamburgers. No, their bussiness is not. It's real estate, the McDonalds shops, all around the world. But it's the hamburgers and other food they sell, eficiently, that give them the way to buy them.
Any article that includes the word 'fungibly' can't be without any merit at all. Yes the title was inept. But he's really saying we now have a level playing field. There are no barriers to entry. The competition is much more fierce. However that means there'll be even more cream floating to the top. Well at least that's how I interpret what he's saying.
Agreed - that's just inane crap. What he meant to say (or would have meant to say had he any understanding of the material) is - "All web servers allow similar functionality."