Webb City, Missouri - In a predatory takeover bid, spiders have bundled up 83 per cent of the world's web design market. Tarantula Inc, a global conglomerate of spiders world-wide, sealed the deal with their recent hostile acquisition of a competitor.
Tarantula Inc spokesperson, Harry Legs, leaked the news to this Fly-on-the-wall correspondent. According to Mr Legs, people have nothing to fear from spiders taking over the web design market.
"We've researched it, and spiders have been designing webs since the Jurassic Period over 136 million years ago. That gives us about 135,999,980 years of experience over our human competitors," spun Mr Legs. "It was just a matter of time before the market sussed it out. But spiders are patient," he slowly added.
Martha Brown Recluse told Fly-on-the-wall that she was ready to join forces with Tarantula Inc. "I've seen some of the web designs done by humans and it's appalling. They're both lacking in aesthetics and non-productive. We get so many hits per day on our websites that we can hardly keep up with the traffic."
Ms Recluse will oversee quality assurance in the new global company. "It's a big undertaking. There are over 35,000 species of spiders worldwide, with 600 in the UK and 3,000 in the US alone," she said venomously. "I hope I have the personality to entice everyone onboard."
Human reaction to the spider web design conglomerate was mixed. Texas A&M professor and arachnologist, Phidippus Audax, has researched the giant spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Eastern Texas.
"It's as big as two Texas high school football stadiums and growing," asserted Professor Audax. "Spiders can be very adept at social networking as well as web networking. Put the two talents together and there will be no stopping them."
"Humans, on the other, can't even get it together enough to solve the credit crisis, let alone design a beautiful website. Did you ever see a website as beautiful as a spider web with fresh morning dew on it? I'd say it's Spiders 1, Humans 0 and the final buzzer just went off. Tell the boys to hang up their jock straps and call it a day."
Simon Geek and Delbert Nerd, co-founders of the Save Our Human Web Designers coalition, vow to fight off the encroachment of spiders into their home territory. "I'm not a violent person," whined Nerd as he twirled his greasy hair between his fingers unaware. "In fact I'd never hurt a fly, which is more than I can say for our competitors. But our livelihood is being threatened by eight legged, eight eyed predatory carnivores."
"Sure their webs are nicer than ours," chimed in Geek as he pulled a wedgie from his bottom and Nerd snickered. "But that's just a seductive move to suck us all in. If you thought the credit crunch was bad, just wait till the entire internet crashes and we're all bundled up in silk waiting to be eaten."
Martha Brown Recluse refuted the Geek and Nerd claims. "We have no evil intentions whatsoever towards humans. We've rather enjoyed your irrational fear of us for the past 5 million years. But it's time to move on," signaled a bemused Ms Recluse.
As an introductory offer, Ms Recluse said that Tarantula Inc was going to throw in 12 free therapy sessions to cure arachnophobia for the first 600 million subscribers to their websites worldwide. "Web surfers and browsers can sign up at itsybitsyspider.web," informed Ms Recluse.
Emboldened by the savvy business sense of Tarantula Inc, there are rumors on Wall Street that spider monkeys are poised to take over 97% of global businesses, corresponding with the 97% overlap in human and monkey DNA. Calls to the spider monkey head office went unanswered at press time.