"Newspapers are being decimated by unbundlers. These are the first generation Internet services (Yahoo, Ebay, Google) who unbundled content from advertising, and unbundled them both from physical delivery. Search has been the killer application--the cheeseburger.
However, the Web's pressure for unbundling is relentless. Witness skyrocketing tiny companies like Goowy that do nothing more that allow you to use best-of-breed web portal services without being tied to any one portal. If I can now re-package search by using an API from the open market, portal-based search is no longer the cheeseburger. It is just dead meat.
Portal strategies are antithetical to a Web Services Economy. The pressure to deconstruct is relentless. The center cannot hold. Just as newpapers are the new mainframes, Web portals are the new newspapers. "
--Peter Rip, leapfrog ventures blog