Mashable isn't any better. In fact, I can't think of a blog from the 2005 to 2006 era that got big and yet maintained the quality that made it worth reading back then.

But try telling that to Google. Because these blogs developed a devoted audience early, they became Google gold. Looking for breaking news? Unless it's from an established source like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, you probably won't find the site where that story originally appeared. But you will find it in its reconstituted, just-add-water-and-stir form on one of these news aggregator sites -- because they're the ones with the Google juice. They're the ones that ride the top of Google News like on the Banzai Pipeline. The bigger they become, the more juice they acquire.

Of course, advertising on the Web is still dirt cheap, relatively speaking. Nobody's dining at Delmonico's on what a banner ad brings in. The only way to make this model work was to create editorial sweatshops (or, like L'Arianna, get people to write simply for the "prestige" of appearing on HuffPo). Thus, we saw the emergence of , which churn out the worst dreck humanly imaginable for pennies a story. They, too, soak up a lot of Google juice just from sheer volume and SEO trickery.

I'm not the only person in this camp. Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo and Weblogs Inc. (bought by AOL back in 2005), -- and he should know because at one time he was one of those who was doing it. His money quote: "We are polluting the Internet."

My prediction: By the end of this year, all of the big traffic blogs will be owned by corporate conglomerates. Like Coke and Pepsi, they won't be competing on who tastes better or is more nutritious, they'll be competing on who's better at marketing --- or, in this case, tweaking Google.