I always wondered what's going on behind the scenes and I think they're more friends than enemies to be honest. Instead of trying to beat each other to their game it'd make more sense if they co-operated in ways. Anyway, check out how sweet Google, Yahoo and MSN are. They all link to eachother from their blogs: Google: What We Are Reading Yahoo: Industry Sources MSN: Sites We Read Those three lists look remarkably the same actually. They all forgot DP though Or they don't want to admit it in an attempt to not loose the competitive edge
I was expecting at least one of them to be using the nofollow tag, that would have been funny. That is certainly a list you want to be on, congrats goes out to at least one member here I think.
I am not sure about how intensely they really read things in there. There is a lot of politics involved as well.