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Several years ago, when I first looked into purchasing my own website, there were so many uses I had in my mind that I could get out of the investment.  First and foremost, of course, was the fact that I could have my own webpage or webpages.  At the time, I'd been using free sites such as Geocities and Tripod, and I was rather sick of how many ads you had to deal with.  (It was all free, after all, so of course you'd have more ads than a pre-Thanksgiving Sunday newspaper.

It was after I set everything up that I realized just how much I could do.  Sitting here today, I realize that now NONE of these other things are true.  The technology of the internet has changed, and owning your own web domain doesn't pack the same punch as it used to.  For example:

• This very blog used to be hosted on my own webspace.  No longer, because Blogger added additional functionality and ease-of-use...BUT only if you host the blog in their own space.  And it's free.
  
• I used to upload any videos I would make here.  YouTube is so good, so organized, so easy to use, and just so much better, there's no point in me using anything else.  And it's free.
  
• I would upload files to my webspace so that people could download them.  It was easier than sending an e-mail attachment, especially if it was a very large file.  I suppose this still holds true to an extent, but if it's a video or audio I could just use YouTube quite easily.  File transfers in instant messaging software has gotten a lot better, too, and they can handle larger files now.  Any documents that I may want to share, I'll use Google Docs.  

This, coupled with the fact that I'm not as active in the whole web page design thing anymore, makes me question my need to have the domain.  My cel gallery is something I'm quite proud of, and I really don't have the ambition to move the thing into a blog.  So I suppose that's one reason.  The other is my e-mail address @pastatdude.com, which I use for just about anything.  This is another annoyance for me, though, because the damned thing hasn't been very reliable over the past week.  They migrated to a new platform, and it just simply hasn't been working.  I find it quite ironic that an e-mail address that I'm *PAYING FOR* is less reliable than G-Mail, which is free.  That's pathetic.

Also, there's something else not lost on me here:  I mentioned Blogger, G-Mail, YouTube, and Google Docs.  All free services...and all owned by Google.  They really have taken over the digital planet, haven't they?  I'm certainly not going to complain -- it's all free, and it all works.  What more could you possibly want?