There is no question that such a combination would form a giant of information-technology services, second only to I.B.M. Less clear, however, is who the next logical takeover candidates are.
Online collections of the criminal face have similarly translated a giant tangle of information into legible physical categories.
"This AOL breach is just a tiny drop in the giant pool of information that these companies have collected," Mr. Bankston said.
Her book treads an interesting middle ground between the academic and the journalistic as she analyzes giant hunks of information and opinion, and also interviews patients to illustrate her points.
Most public registries are maintained in government databases, creating giant, siloes of information.
It's one giant clusterfuck of information.
This is not some giant leak of information about California students.
Now, leading organizations are building "data lakes" -- giant reservoirs of information in heterogeneous formats, to aid decision-making and to offer new services to customers.
Google's new Director of Engineering and noted futurist Ray Kurzweil told TechCrunch he's leveraging the search giant's warehouse of information to build users a "cybernetic friend".
But in this new age of publishing, this content is often buried under other crap because the publishers insist on these giant payload deliveries of information (which a physical magazine is just a vehicle for, as well).
It's not trying to be one of the giants, with reams of information on every destination, as Rugel says, "What we're trying to do is totally different, our goal is not to be comprehensive, our goal is to be really selective with the content we've got on the site".
