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What's the end game for Internet media companies? Ever since the AOL Time Warner deal, I've been obsessed with figuring out what the next generation of companies who rely on attracting audiences with content will look like. Despite the surfeit of research reports and predictions, there is no clear roadmap. Why? Because no one today knows that the digital landscape will look like in five years.

I know this because I was asking the same question five years ago when squeezing money from Internet content seemed a feat worthy of Moses. But that experience still doesn't yield too many clues to the Promised Land of Internet media. Rather, the questions just keep getting larger. Here's the biggest one, to my mind: is aggregation an end in itself or is the content middleman just today's flavor, a placeholder that will have to change or perish?

The ultimate Web-based aggregator, and by far the most successful, is Yahoo. It serves the most pages of any stand-alone Web service and has turned a profit on the traffic, no easy trick on the Net. Yahoo provides its users with two things: content from elsewhere, and tools to manage that content. The content is typical of the digital age -- commodity news headlines, e-mail, the weather, stock prices, links, and everything else a mile wide and an inch deep. That kind of content can be found anywhere. It's the tools that keep you coming back because 1. they work quickly and easily and 2. you're investing your time and information.

Nonetheless, Yahoo thrives on the back of information it has spent nothing to create. By being early and being good, it created an audience that marketers wanted access to. It sold ads. Later, it added services by the dozen, all the while piling on other people's content. And it sold a lot more ads. Yahoo is the place you go every day. For me and millions of others, it's virtually a second desktop. But I think it has an Achilles heel.

In this generation of the Internet, version 1.5 for the sake of argument, it is widely accepted that only a few wide oceans of content will remain intact. The winners, our main jumping off points, will be AOL, Yahoo and handful of others. Conventional wisdom dictates that everything else will devolve into an ever-widening series of "verticals," which will intersect slightly, but maintain their integrity. In this world, the consumer will choose a portal and as many vertical as she needs. Customization techniques will allow her to find relevant information quickly, and thanks to attentive middlemen, she'll be hooked up with the appropriate content providers and e-commerce opportunities.

But what if customization really succeeds? What if it's eons better than what you can get on My Yahoo right now? And what if it's freeware and not something offered by Yahoo? Then, of course, you're staring content disintermediation in the face. In this model, content creators won't need Yahoo, AOL -- or even their own million-dollar Web sites -- to distribute unique information and entertainment to the right audience. Every user of the network will be her own portal, her own content manager. But will she also be her own marketer?

Now take the de-evolution of network gatekeepers a step further. A few weeks back, impressed by the "beaming" function of the Palm V computer, I took the concept to the farthest degree ("Beam Me Up: I'm a Walking, Talking, Client and Server"). A soon-to-be released product for children, the Cybiko, will allow users to send messages back and forth wirelessly and play a variety of multi-player games. Neat, but the real trick comes when you link up a bunch of Cybikos -- each of which as a range of 300 feet -- creating a virtual wireless network with user-generated content entirely outside of a gatekeeper of any kind. Imagine removing the network narrow points, so that content flows freely without either major portals or service providers. No Yahoos, AOLs, MSNs, or atHomes -- just free wireless communication. Won't the network user come to accept content from that network as easily as she accepts it from Yahoo?

Let's take a look at another major aggregator of content of a different sort. DoubleClick aggregates two things more successfully than any other Internet company -- advertising availabilities and consumer profiles. Websites and marketers need DoubleClick's virtual controlled marketing for advertising and users, and the markets of its imitators. The ad-serving networks of the current time serve a valuable purpose in creating value for content and paying -- eventually -- the creators of that content. DoubleClick is a key player in the value chain.

But what if the tools existed to jump-start an Internet marketing campaign to millions with no money down? What if the freeware customization service of the future also stores consumer preferences -- this time entirely created by the consumers with no privacy concerns? If every user was her own portal, her own content manager, than she could also be her own marketer, allowing herself to be hooked up to products her self-generated profile believes she will like. DoubleClick may evolve into a software specialist, or a repository of consumer information. But it would be hard-pressed, in that scenario, to be the dominant intermediary.

And now imagine these free customization tools running on a faster, richer network filled with full-scale video, audio, and new forms of content, of expression, of media? Will there be a role for the aggregators?

One factor argues in the affirmative -- and that is media users' propensity to be attracted to brands. We come to trust the aggregators, because we believe that their success is a guarantor of quality. We know that Yahoo will be there each and every day. We know that DoubleClick really can provide targeted advertising.

Nonetheless, it's vital for both entrepreneurs, capitalists, and the executives of the today's successful aggregators to look at the models for the disintermediation of content. Because just as clear as the success of the Yahoos and DoubleClicks is the temporary nature of their dominant positions. In five years, the network will be a different place, and if trends continue, more power and control will devolve to both business and consumer users.

* Tom Watson is co-founder and co-managing editor of atNewYork.com.