What does your long-term internet strategy look like? Do you even have one? If you don’t, it is hardly surprising, when the online world remains in such a state of constant and unpredictable change.

The one thing you can say with any confidence about the web and its future impact on business is that nobody really knows what is going to happen ­ and there are few reliable sources that you can count on for predictions worthy enough to build your company strategy around.

Just look at the debates and battles that are going on at the moment.

In one corner, Microsoft is slugging it out with Yahoo. The search firm is trying to play tag, looking for partners to prevent it falling into the clutches of the software giant. But so far, few are willing to take as big a financial bet as Redmond.

In another corner, the online advertising firms are trying to carve out a way to use our personal surfing habits to make more money without infringing our privacy ­ and often making a complete hash of it.

Elsewhere in the ring are ISPs and content providers arguing about who pays for the rise in bandwidth-hungry services such as video ­- the success of the BBC iPlayer leading to the latest round of finger-pointing.

And then there is the software industry, agonising over the growing popularity of hosted business applications such as Salesforce.com or Google Apps, and how the rise of these low-cost ­ or even free ­ online services will affect their lucrative licensing models.

Then you run out of corners, and stuck in the middle find the poor internet user ­ - both individual and corporate -­ not sure which way to turn.

For IT leaders, the only certainty is that the internet will, of course, be central to your plans. But the companies that want to make the most of the oppo rtunities online need to stay innovative, agile, and ready to respond rapidly ­as the often-conflicting forces determining the future play out their costly games.