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AOL Time Warner Netscape CNN... and AT&T?
Baldrson noted a bit running on Yahoo right now where the AOL, Time, Warner, Netscape, CNN mega corporation is in talks with AT&T for their cable network. The inevitable and scary consolidation continues ever onward. The US govt will be sold on eBay in a few years, but only Microsoft and the corporation formerly known as Netscape AOL Warner CNN AT&T Time (NAWCAT) will be left to bid. But since Nawcat will already own ebay, there will no doubt be rumors of unfair play.
Laws against monopolies are great, but if nobody bothers to enforce them, they are USELESS.
Would somebody please explain this to governments around the world? One day the companies will be TOO BIG to enforce anything upon! If one company owns, say 75% of the media, they can make AND break poloticians because this company OWNS the public opnion (sad but true).
Why'd they stop? 'Cause all the "dark future" stuff they read about kept coming true! Reality TV, Corporate owned gov'ments, cameras in your toliet...Gee, I guess we really do live in interesting times.
It's a Brave New 1984.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
... if people knew a bit more about economic necessities, they'd clearly see that there's no need for 'buying the government'. No government in the world will make decisions opposing their economical big players. That's what their counsellors are for, to prevent them from conducting stupid things that scare away the ones that pay their chairs (no, not directly, I'm not talking corruption here).
This is one of the simplest economical rules, which Marx (and I guess Adam Smith as well) had already pointed out, and not much has changed since then in that respect. The big corporations can make better use of that dough instead.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
(Disclaimer - I'm British, these are nominally American companies and this would mostly affect American users. Flame away if you think this is none of my business.)
I have to say, this whole saga sounds so much like AOL etc. _daring_ the government to stop them. They can't quite believe they're getting away with it but hey, if they can buy the world before anyone notices and complains then they might as well give it a try...
Someone _really_ needs some backbone to stand up to this, it's ridiculous. A company like this would have so much power it isn't funny and they need stopping. From a shareholder point of view, a company this large would likely be quite unwieldy and so probably wouldn't be as good value as the individuals currently are collectively.
Except look at the current 'business friendly' Whitehouse. Oh well, better luck in 2004, guys.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Let's face it, US government is already open to the highest bidder, like some banana country
- Trial against Microsoft, canceled
- cancellation of the Balistic arms treaty, (military
expenses will rise again....)
- killing off environment treaty.
- Organising Bush to be elected to help this all
So AOL/TW won't get the entire AT&T cable market, just part of it.
Yes, but in a publicly owned company, percentage share IS ownership. The outright monopoly is naturally 51%, but 40% is pretty much running the show.
Microsoft helped create the computer/software world. You're a fool if you think otherwise. Your close mindedness is typical of the avergage /.er.
I read slashdot cause I like perspective. I use Windows. I use Linux. I know heaps about Windows. I know heaps about Unix. I program under Windows. I program under Unix.
I get angry when I read obviously brainwashed posts. Even if we just talk about the software world, there are companies that are just as devious as Microsoft (only not as big - therefore not as noticable). Ever heard of Sun or Oracle? They're just as much a threat as Microsoft is. In the past, all they've cared about is making big money from big companies - they never cared about the little guys with PCs at home. In the end, Microsoft's and Gate's charitable donations are to important things (health, education, third worlds). I can't remember the last time McNeally or Ellison doing that. The last big thing Ellison bought was prolly a new jet plane.
By talking about Microsoft as if they're some kind of 'evil' entity, you make belittle the real problems.
And BTW, slashdot is supposed to be "news for nerds". Not "news for geeks". Discussions that aren't computer related somehow end up bashing Microsoft. It's childish.
against monopolies. In and of itself, monopolies are not illegal. Iit's only when you abuse that monopoly power that it's against the law.
They say nobody owns the Internet.. I'm not so sure anymore..
Well, he also happened to be the enemy of our best ally in the region (Israel), and also the enemy of a nation with middling ties to the US (Saudi Arabia), and Iraq's army, while not particularly modernized, was not of inconsiderable size -- within the top 10 in manpower, ISTR.
And the whole "I'm going to invade because I've got a historical claim to your land" is more than slightly destabilizing; if allowed to stand as precedent, probably just about every reasonably-old nation on Earth could use that as an excuse. That situation might make enormous amounts of money in the short term for the US (being the world's leading provider of small arms, IIRC), but isn't desirable from, oh, just about any other point of view.
Oh, and it also wouldn't have helped if Israel decided it a) had been abandoned by its one historical major ally, b) was surrounded by people obsessed with killing them, and c) was facing a madman with a rather large army, chemical-weapon warhead artillery, and a nuclear ambition. Given that Israel is thought to be a nuclear power, after all.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
There's this little mom & pop operation called Nike (I know, you probably haven't heard of them) that does just that.
-Legion
Histarical chect pounding aside, AT&Ts broadband unit has been it a hurt for a long time. It's not suprising that AOL Time-Warner is considering this purchase.
As for weather it's good for consumers: well, market forces have acted to consolidate ISPs throughout the world. This isn't just a U.S. phenomenon. Perhaps the minimum efficient scale of this kind of service is similar to that of telephone service (vary large). We've learned from the past 100 years that regulation of monopolies isn't *always* a good thing. There are certain natural monopolies in free markets. We have seen this in telephone service, where we tried to regulate a natural monopoly out of existance, then after those regulations were eliminated - at a time when there were several large competitors in the market - a consolidation took place, not because of anti-competitive practices of one player, but because it was more efficient to do business on a larger scale than any on the indevidual players were able to do in their form at that time.
The same might be said of the internet access market. Given the bariers to entry, (exhorbinnet infastructure cost, support costs, etc.) it might be more cost effective to operate on a vary large scale, rather than have many small competitors in the merket. Just look to the DSL service provider market for evidence of this. Independant DSL service providers have been going under right left and center. This is not because of anti-competitive practices, or pricing; it's because they weren't able to cost effectively manage infastructure and support. Perhaps this market is simply a natural monopoly and the free markets are moving to increase efficiency.
Or onthe other hand, it could be a massive conspiracy... which I grant you would make for a better story, but just isn't true.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Does Nike literally force people to work there, or do they merely offer a better job, however horrid it might be to ivory western sensibilities, than their local third world "economy" offers? If the latter, then they are part of the good solution, not part of the problem.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
You do not have to believe AOL/TW/etc is inherently evil in order to feel this merger is dangerous and Not Good.
No, this is not some evil scheming thing. Yes, this is a sane, valid, sensible business choice, and what AOL/TW would be expected to do. It's still really bad. AOL/TW is quite simply not to be trusted with that kind of market power. Not that they're evil or shifty; just that they're human. Just that that is too much power, too much control, too much influence, and in my opinion at least it is simply not safe to allow that much influence to be collected into one entity. And that AOL/TW has given [me, us] no reason to believe that they are (or will remain) responsible enough to use that power and influence in wholly responsible ways. And that whether or not the potential abuses of AOL/TW/AT&T (or even the current AOL/TW) were (are) to materialize, if those potential abuses do begin to slowly be implemented then there will be literally nothing in place to stop them.
Power Corrupts. I wish more people still believed that..
as far as size goes, there are plenty of companies out there that would dwarf AOLTW..
size, yes. both in terms of employee and $ power, yes, there are larger companies. However, two things:
First off, the issues are not with the simple size of this company, but about the strength and kinds of the leverage it would have. This is not about horizontal market power, although in some specific markets the resulting bethemoth would have LOTS of horizontal power; this is about vertical market power. Anyone alarmed is not alarmed by its mere strength, but by the huge number of markets that it has strength in.
Secondly, i for one am alarmed by a really large media company far more than i am by a really large steel company, simply because from watching current events it would seem to me that media companies are actively threatening my constitutional rights. The companies in the exact spaces that AOL/TW is in seem, to me, currently to be the only groups who are poised, willing, and actively trying to invade my personal privacy and freedom in ways that make me uncomfortable. There are lots of steel companies much "bigger" than AOL/TW, but the steel companies aren't the one paying elected representatives to support things like the SSSCA. (Of course, were i a union laborer my view of the steel companies would surely be different. And those steel companies are surely paying those same elected representatives to produce things like corporate welfare and lax environmental regulations. However, this does not change the fact that raw size goes a LOT further with media than it does with heavy industries.)
p.s.: if my english is a bit garbled this morning, please excuse me. low amounts of sleep longwinded + run-on sentences... [slurrring]tha'sallthankyu.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
> This is great news for all of us. We finally have
> a company that would challenge Microsoft.
This is great news for all of us. We finally have a company that would challenge IBM. - Me, you, everyone, about 12 years ago.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.