What's ours on the Net?

Put aside for the moment question of what's legally ours on the Net. Instead, consider what's ours in a less explicit and less rigorous sense. Google feels like ours (even though it legally belongs to its
shareholders) while Microsoft's new search site feels like theirs. Weblogs feel like their ours while online columns do not. The Mac feels like it's ours while Dell computers do not. Craigslist feels like it's ours while newspaper classified ads and Monster.com feel like theirs. In fact, many of us feel and act as if downloaded mp3s were ours. Is this sense of "ours" an illusion? Is it a temporary artifact that will vanish in months or years? What makes something that's not legally ours still feel that way, on the Web or off? And does this provide a way of figuring out why many of us feel so passionately about the load of bits we call the Net?


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Thanks GG