iTunes Music Store Downloads Top One Billion Songs Apple
It seems worth marking this milestone in the evolution of communications and entertainment. Last week, Apple sold its 1,000,000,000th iTunes song- making close to a billion dollars in download sales for Apple not to mention a revolution in the way consumers get their music.(Appropriately, the song was "The Speed of Sound"). Apple now sells more music than any of the pure media store chains.

Along the way, Apple became a really big computer company again, passing Dell this winter in market cap. And this week, another hint at their comback - rumors of Apple buying Disney! Yes, Steve Jobs will have 7% of old Walt's legacy when the sale of Pixar is done. (Oh, and Pixar is 20 years old! What was their first film?)

It would be amazing enough to think of these two companies as equally sized if one recalls all Disney's theme parks, studios, stores and branded items from diapers to watches to game units; not to mention its treasure chest film library, soon to be re-re-re-released on Blue-Ray high definition 7.2 surround sound splendor. Yet Disney also owns ESPN, ABC broadcasting, and all the affilate media and merchandizing therein. Wasn't it just a year or three ago that go.com seemed ubiquitous and ready to take on MSN, Yahoo!, and AOL? And wasn't Apple the company everybody wrote off as gone? You go little fruit-emblazened company, you go!