To judge by recent events in the financial information services market, the old order changes – but not too fast. Reuters' announcement in early February of its intention to "migrate its core business to an internet-based model" did not mention the possibility that it might one day start pumping data to its professional users over the public internet.

The bottom line still remains that, despite the phenomenal growth in the number of competing financial information services delivered over the public internet (and their extremely aggressive pricing), the major players, such as Reuters, Bloomberg and Bridge, are sticking with their own private networks.