The open Internet is being closed and colonized by digital giants like Apple, Netflix and Facebook that stand to control the media business for a generation.

So Newser.com founder Michael Wolff (pictured) told the NextMedia conference Monday as he argued the web’s fractured audience has only been mastered and monetized so far by Google.

But other digital monoliths are now poised to subvert Google’s dominance.

“Is Facebook, the iPad and Netflix different [than Google]? That’s the moment we’re at right now. There are these new forms of media behavior that have reached critical mass, and they may well change the nature of media for the next generation or two,” Wolff told NextMedia in a keynote address.

“That’s what we’re waiting to find out,” he added.

Wolff argued the iPad, Netflix and Facebook have been able to offer a compelling “experience and functionality” for consumers.

“And that’s what the media business has always done,” he added.

Wolff said the next stage was making a fractured Internet “rational in a way the media business once was and where you can then take the audience and make money off of them.”

Wolff’s opening address underlined the convergence theme of this year’s NextMedia conference in Toronto.

“Multiplatform is here and happening. I load up my iPad, look at my Economist magazine edition, and subscribe for $109 a year,” Mark Greenspan, COO of Achilles Media said as he launched the media conference.

“Now we’re seeing convergence of different industries – music, technology, advertising, entertainment – all are coming together,” he added.

Jory Groberman, executive director of digital media at Achilles Media, which organizes NextMedia, recalls an earlier earthquake caused by the Internet that hit the music business he came out of.

“That same upheaval is coming to all content industries. And we know that change breeds opportunity. That’s why we’re all here today,” Groberman said.

NextMedia runs to Tuesday in Toronto.