There are more than a few companies in the Internet industry that would like to emulate this consolidation model. It sounds like the death knell for the rhetoric that the Networked Economy was going to offer everyone equal play. Everyone does have a more or less equal shot in the early stages of a market's development. The automobile industry is consolidated down to three major players in the United States, and to a handful of other players around the world. But there were hundreds of automobile manufacturers at one point.
All markets consolidate with time.
In 1998, the median acquisition size grew dramatically. Yes, because the drive for scale is going to increase. Whatever is defined by scale eventually grows. It used to be that we only had one billion-dollar software company. Now we've got a dozen.