• Gizmodo, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 11:57 AM

Gizmodo's Sam Biddle thinks Facebook is "AOLifying" the Web. Translation? Like AOL back in the days of dial-up, Facebook increasingly represents the all-encompassing face of the Web, as well as the official gateway to any service and piece of content worth your time -- and that's a bad thing.

"Over a decade after the Web portal stopped making sense, Facebook is trying to assemble itself, like some ill-conceived Voltron, into the next," accuses Biddle. The problem, as the most successful Web giants have learned, is that no company can be good at everything. They inevitably try, however, which often stifles the development of service and content providers as well as the consumers who consume them.

According to Biddle, it wasn't until AOL's empire crumbled that "the real Internet" that we know today was able blossom with a million services, content sources, and apps. "But no," says Biddle. "Facebook ... wants to be everything."

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