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.

Comments

CNN

[THB]

CNN is a news channel owned by the Time Warner, and now the part of the Time Warner AOL company, their name is not part of either companies name.

This also isn't a merger so much as it is one large company buying a share of the assets of another. The rest of AT&Ts opperations would be seperate.

you forgot yahoo!

[sehryan]

don't forget the fact that aol is foaming at the mouth for Yahoo! Check it:

http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whoi s?STRING=aoltimewarneryahoo.com&STRING=Search

Forget Microsoft. Fear AOL.

The law

[fons]

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).

Re:The law

[Shivetya]

// Would somebody please explain this to governments around the world? One day the companies will be TOO BIG to enforce anything upon! //

Not true, governments have guns. I doubt seriously any business is going to be able to fight that.

Plus wonderful countries like Brazil and South Africa are starting the horrendous trend of taking property and intellectual rights from corporations. They usually use the phrase "for the good of the people" but it simply proves business are subject to governments.

Re:The law

[Bearpaw]

Not true, governments have guns. I doubt seriously any business is going to be able to fight that.

Why would business need guns when it can manipulate governments into using guns for them? It's not like this doesn't happen already (and hasn't been happening for at least decades).

Plus wonderful countries like Brazil and South Africa are starting the horrendous trend of taking property and intellectual rights from corporations.

"Taking them", or taking them back? In any case, that's not exactly "starting the ... trend". (a) It's not something new and (b) there's actually less of that than there is of the reverse.

You've heard of "privatization", right? That's where a corporation takes over a government function, and proves that they're at least as good at running a bureaucracy as a government is, and even better at making sure as few benefits as possible get to the people who pay for them.

Governments? Corporations? Two sides of same intentionally-devalued coin. A pox on both their houses.

Re:The law

[bluebomber]

Corporations aren't legally bound to serve anyone except their stockholders.

Ideally, a corporation will cease to exist if it fails to provide value to its customers. This, of course, assumes that the marketplace works. Monopolies (see MS, AOLTW, AT&T, Verizon, etc) tend to prevent the marketplace from working in this manner.

Most governments have to at least pay lip-service to serving its citizens. Corporations don't even have to do that.

What rock have you been living under? Do the governments of China, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, or Cuba pay even lip-service to serving their citizens? If they do, it is nominal at best. Most of the world is not free.

Also, I don't have to own shares in my government to take part in its voting system.

No, you don't have to own shares in the government (a voluntary activity). But if you don't pay your taxes, you will eventually be labelled a felon, and you will thus lose your right to vote. (Note that the IRS claims that the US tax system is voluntary. As noted above, you can "volunteer" to pay taxes, or you can "volunteer" to go to jail.) It is also quite difficult in many areas of the country to vote if you are homeless or transient.

As for the previous poster's comment about corporations not being able to hire armies: what is to stop them? Why couldn't MS hire some goons, buy weaponry (guns, ammo, artillery, tanks, missiles, and a few helicopters), and take over a small country (like Australia)?

40% Stake

[sourcehunter]

According to the article:
"Citing ``people familiar with the situation,'' the paper said AOL would hold a 40 percent interest in the business and leave AT&T with the majority control it wants.

So AOL/TW won't get the entire AT&T cable market, just part of it.

Yet another reason I use ADSL.

Re:40% Stake

[Root Down]

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.

Life imitates art

[MegaFur]

You know my parents tell me that back when they were young, they used to read a lot more science fiction than they do now.

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.

what's the big deal?

[UM_Maverick]

Everybody knows that AT&T Broadband is for sale. It only makes sense that another cable company would be the one making the purchase. Comcast made the first offer, Cox is rumored to be interested, of course AOLTW is going to be interested. It makes sense for them. This isn't so much an evil megalo-corp bent on world domination as it is a large company that probably can't hit growth targets without making acquisitions.

And as far as size goes, there are plenty of companies out there that would dwarf AOLTW...some people need to calm down and take a look at the world before freaking out...

Re:what's the big deal?

[mcc]

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.

Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough

[GregWebb]

(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.

Who owns what

[Barbara Streisand]

An interesting resource guide to what the major media companies own.

Re:More important issues

[TummyX]

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.

if this goes thru

[alumshubby]

...does it mean that AOL would finally have enough bandwidth that it wouldn't have response problems during peak usage times? That's one of the frustrations I had with using it.

Zappa said it

[gelfling]

Politics is the entertainment wing of industry. You don't need to 'buy' a country. All you need to do is buy the people who sit in key organizational, policy and operational roles in government. Those are called elections.

Re:Road Runner Users

[naChoZ]

I work for RR and I'd like to know how it's going to affect us too... ;)

Seriously though, the fcc is mandating that RR open up the pipes for other ISP's to offer cable modem service. First on the list, Earthlink. 15 seconds (yes, it's in the court order, 15 seconds) after Earthlink gets their 1st cable modem subscriber, AOL is allowed to start offering their service via cable modem.

Pain in the ass for us because we've had to do a whole lot of work on the back-end systems and provisioning stuff so that they can be provisioned according to which ISP they're subscribing.

This stuff with AT&T is a little confusing because after AT&T bought MediaOne, they were ordered to divest of all their shares of RR, which they did. AT&T in the Boston area is still using the RR brand itself, but they actually aren't an RR affiliate any longer. They'll be discontinuing their use of the RR brand sometime soon, I'm told.

I do know that AT&T was really impressed with the way RR did business. Their @home offering is just ridiculous compared to RR. They thought they could just have this big cable modem operation by bringing in a bunch of 3rd party vendors to build the shit, drop it in place and it would just run... NOT. When they saw how RR does things, I think they realized how aweful their operation was. I even heard that @home was giving customers static ip addresses in some divisions (don't know if this is still the cast)... While that may sound attractive to end users who want to run servers, what they don't realize is that it pretty much prevents growth. When utilization in a particular area grows, you need to be able to split the area up, which requires an ip renumber. If you can't renumber because everyone has a static, pretty soon the area is going to get horribly oversold resulting in super-slow access.

So, as far as how it affects RR users, it shouldn't, really. I suspect RR is just going to be another service offering, so it will be one of your choices of ISP's, pretty much. The worst case basis is that RR simply becomes a delivery vehicle for aol... *%!$ that noise...

Re:Isn't RR/TimeWarner to Open to Competitors?

[spudnic]

Are you unhappy with RR? I move around a lot, so I've had everything from 64k ISDN, 128k ISDN, DSL, @home, and now Road Runner.

Road Runner is the best by far. Maybe it's just this area, but I have only had one problem in the last 8 months since I moved here, and that was only for about an hour.

Speed is consistantly fast, I can connect to my machine to do anything I want from the outside, and news groups just fly.

A guy I work with (a non-tech) was aking if he should switch from dial-up to cable.

He said, "I bet you can download a lot of dirty pictures over cable."

I responded, "I don't download dirty pictures anymore."

He looked a bit confused and asked, "Really?"

I said, "No, now I download dirty MOVIES!"

He ordered it that afternoon.

Would this purchase really be bad for the market?

[hillct]

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

Re:Come and have a go if you think you're hard eno

[jayhawk88]

Oh well, better luck in 2004, guys.

2004? What the hell are you talking about? The next election is in 1984. I hear Reagan is going to promise no new taxes, and...

Oh, wait, your right, it is 2001. Sorry, with everything going on over here, I got a little confused.