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AOL Seeks Cable Pact With MSN
Daemosthenes points to this Washington Post article, which reads in part: "America Online Inc. is negotiating a deal to give its long-standing nemesis Microsoft Corp. access to Time Warner Inc.'s cable-television lines in a push to meet government demands over AOL's pending takeover of the media company, according to sources familiar with the matter. The rapprochement between AOL and MSN, Microsoft's online service, is a startling reversal of form for two fierce competitors offering rival online services and instant-messaging systems." The entangling alliances here are thicker than your average EULA, too -- the story points out some of the other tendrils which tie together several of the big ISPs, including one of mine (Earthlink).
More than a 60 years ago two great powers signed a pact upon which all World went into butcher's shop. Before this, for nearly three years, these guys were eating slowly their neighbors. Germany on Central-Europe, USSR on Asia. Then the pact came up and they started to eat everyone they could. And they ended eating each other.
Today two Internet powers sign a pact similar, in nature, to Ribbentrop-Molotov's. Frankly, what we see here is a division of spheres of influence. And this is scaring as we have seen how there powers have been carrying a similar behaviour to the one seen in the 30's. AOL annexed Netscape. Microsoft fights the evil of the Federal Government and the American States. AOL invaded occupied ICQ and several other "small enclaves" on Internet. Microsoft tries to revert consumer needs to his own understanding of what computers & Internet should be.
Now, they are up to the "Polish territories". The giants of Mass Media, once a power by itself but which was quite shaken by the advent of Internet. They are dividing, by "zones of control", what is still relatively independent of their ideologies/practices. No matter our feelings to the Mass Media this is should be considered as a war call. They are invading the last and most important piece of information control for the masses.
I would name this a "stab in our backs"...
These "deals" should be illegal, they target the non-tech savvy and those with the least amount of money.
So now the government should get involved and outlaw bad deals? So, if I want to charge more than my neighbor for similar service, I should be able to be held legally liable? How about we simply expect that people will take personal responsibility for themselves and do a little price shopping? Jesus, how far do we go to protect the 'lowest common denominator'?
It is not a monopoly, it is the monopoly's evil brother, an oligopoly (market control by a few large, often interconnected, players). Oligopolies are usually just as bad as monopolies, sometimes worse because our anti-trust laws are not as strong wrt to them as they are for pure monopolies.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The word pact connotates a pretty shady aggrement to me. As in, signing a pact with the devil. When AOL and MSN sign a 'pact', which one of them do we consider the devil?
Steve
before: which country do you come from ?
after: which corpo do you live for ?
Don't you feel someone has read too many gibson's novells ???
If that hell becomes reality, will he be seen as the Jules Vernes of the 21th century?
"Power, in Case's world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had transcended old barriers. Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality. You couldn't kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated position, access the vast banks of corporate memory."
Jules Vernes described a world where science helped men to free themselves, not to build new ways of stealing freedom from each others.
At least before, we had two gigantic evil companies- are we going to end up with one octopus of satan? How many degrees of seperation will projects such as, say, mozilla be away from IE? Will AOL become the default Windows browser? *shudder* What else could they try to anal rape us with?
-Elendale (moving to canada...)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Microsoft will enter into a pact with Netscape giving them access to their Operating System!
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
I'm sick and tired of all the people equating AOL with Microsoft, claiming they're both equal on some great scale of evilness, joining into the mindless chorus of people screaming about how AOL needs to be stamped out immediately for the good of humankind.
In case you'd forgotten, Microsoft makes the operating system than more than 90% of the computer users in the world use. In most cases, there are no viable alternatives to using Microsoft's software; if your business requires that you have to work seamlessly with all the other people in your office, then you'd better be running Windows and Word and Excel and PowerPoint, or else purchase compatible software on your own and train yourself to use it. Microsoft has gotten a lot of bad press because they have willingly and knowingly leveraged their power to crush their opposition and force their way into dominance in new markets, beyond the boundaries of fair play.
AOL, on the other hand, offers a service to get people onto the Internet. Sure, they offer a lot of content on their own site, but you never even have to look at it. Sure, they've been buying up a bunch of companies to diversify their offerings, but none of these acquisitions is an 800-pound gorilla. You don't have to use AIM, you can use a freeware ICQ client if you want to, you can use some other mp3 player than WinAMP, you can use some other browser than Netscape's... in fact, if you don't want to use AOL at all, then EarthLink is just as good, or there are hundreds of other ISP's which work just as well. Nobody has to have AOL in their life at all.
And AOL hasn't stomped all over the industry. They haven't been given a consent decree to violate, they haven't been run through court on breaking anti-trust laws. Yes, so maybe they're in a position where they *could* abuse their power... but, to my knowledge, they haven't yet. And this is just what the lengthy approval process for the merger is designed to prevent.
Of course AOL is going to balk at letting other companies have access to its cables; it wants to be able to leverage that. But I think they'll end up having to concede this in order to get approval on the merger.
Just because AOL is a huge company, don't let your anti-capitalist leanings condemn them. When and if they break the law, they will be dealt with according to the law; but until and unless that ever happens, don't go around saying that Steve Case is the spawn of Satan.
Just put some AT&T in the mix and we'll have an ISP that can take you Anywhere you want to go today @Home with the easiest no-wonder-it's-number-one access to the Internet.
Monopoly anyone? Unfair trade practices?
You do realize that a lot of companies know that competition hurts them both, so that's why so many of them create organizations and associations to help prevent 'destructive' competition - or at the very least exclude others. Look at the Big 3 auto makers and the Auto Pact. Look how happy utilities companies were when utility price standardization came in. Sure it didn't mean huge profits, but it meant consistent ones. RIAA? MPAA?
What MS and AOL are doing is starting the beginnings of another such association - they'll probably try and squeeze out smaller ISPs, likely with government help. When governments start demanding content control on the internet such as keeping porn away from kids, these guys will step up and use that as an excuse to squeeze out small companies. They'll use anything as an excuse. Look at the MPAA - if you're an independent film maker, just TRY and get a real rating on your film. Playboy had an interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone and they discussed how one of their films kept getting an NC-17 rating and they couldn't get it through... they got no help and no one would tell them which parts were offensive. But when they were making the South Park movie, the rules were bent for some parts of it, and they ALWAYS knew what to remove/edit.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Nemesis? Netscape owner AOL has been using a special version of Internet Explorer software since day one, and still continue to do so. The full Internet Explorer 4.0, 5.0, and 5.5 browser is also bundled onto many of the AOL CD's distributed in the last few years. So what is this "nemesis"? AOL and MS have been allies from day one.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.