The Big Five of Commercial Media After a number of mergers and acquisitions five powerful media conglomerates lead the world's content production and distribution. They operate on an international basis with subsidiaries all around the globe and engage in every imaginable kind of media industry. Table: The World's Leading Media Companies Media Company 1998 Revenues (in US$) Property/Corporate Information AOL Time Warner (US) 26,838.000.000* http://www.timewarner.com/corp/about/timewarnerinc/corporate/index.html Disney (US) 22,976.000.000 http://www.disney.com Bertelsmann (GER) 16,389.000.000 http://www.bertelsmann.com/facts/report/report.cfm News Corporation (AUS) 12,841.000.000 http://www.newscorp.com/public/cor/cor_m.htm Viacom (US) 12,100.000.000 http://www.viacom.com/global.tin (* Revenues of Time Warner only (merger with AOL took place in January 2000)

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User tracking User tracking is a generic term that covers all the techniques of monitoring the movements of a user on a web site. User tracking has become an essential component in online commerce, where no personal contact to customers is established, leaving companies with the predicament of not knowing who they are talking to. Some companies, such as Red Eye, Cyber Dialogue, and SAS offer complete technology packages for user tracking and data analysis to online businesses. Technologies include software solutions such as e-mine, e-discovery, or WebHound Whenever user tracking is performed without the explicit agreement of the user, or without laying open which data are collected and what is done with them, considerable privacy concerns have been raised. http://www.redeye.co.uk/ http://www.cyberdialogue.com/ http://www.sas.com/ http://www.spss.com/emine/ http://www.sas.com/solutions/e-discovery/inde... http://www.sas.com/products/webhound/index.ht... http://www.linuxcare.com.au/mbp/meantime/

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