When Thomson bought Reuters last month for $15.6 billion, they wasted no time in replacing the wire agency's jellyfish-y logo with a bland orange starburst. They really screwed us over when we had to be at the Reuters building for a meeting and COULD NOT FIND IT because it was missing its big blue sign. (An address like "3 Times Square" means nothing to us.) But now that the two mega info services are in a sexless marriage, it's time to analyze what happens when your market capitalization now stands at $28 billion, or more than double your closest competitor, Bloomberg.

On the plus side, there's smarts: Thomson, which grew from a single newspaper in Ontario in 1930 before fiddling with plenty of others, saw the declining revenues of the industry farther ahead than its rivals, and sold off most of its broadsheet stakes and going digital. Whodathunk.

But Bloomberg, argues Business Week, "has more cachet—every trader wants one of its terminals—and a sterling reputation for service. And customers say Thomson's financial offerings are a hodgepodge of acquisitions that don't always work together."

Perhaps, but guess who's not weathering a PR crisis launched by a bunch of pregnant ladies?