Binance bought CoinMarketCap (syndication) - What's that about?

When the whole industry uses a single site as a benchmark for checking its prices and to confirm news, stats and info regarding crypto projects, then that site becomes pretty important quickly. If the site suddenly gets snapped up by a major exchange then the industry is right to wonder whether this constitutes a 'conflict of interest'.

For one thing, will users of CoinMarketCap (CMC) become proxy users of Binance and how does that affect their purchasing options and decisions on the particular exchanges currently used by such individuals? Are we going to see an era of independent price-fixing and market making by exchanges? Will we see consolidation of exchanges, where big-bank-takes-little-bank,¹ to paraphrase Ice Cube?

These are important questions. And do we trust all the 'new' price information? All this places fresh impetus on the meaning and importance of 'market research' or let's just cite an American writer here ...