Geoff Duncan

During the last 18 months and through a series of acquisitions (first by Vivendi/Universal, then General Electric/NBC) MP3.com went from a well-known, robust healthy glow to a pop-up-laden "monetized" site to a sickly pale shell of its former self to a vegetative online music distributor connected to an ever-narrowing feeding tube from the teat of its corporate parents.

Well, today MP3.com announced the date of its funeral: December 2, 2003. CNET has purchased "certain assets" and says it's going to start some sort of artist service in the as-yet-unspecified future. Yeah, right. Sure ain't holding my breath on that one.