Slashdot Mirror
Alcatel and Lucent to Merge
Cappella writes "It is confirmed. Alcatel and Lucent are combining to form a USD $25 billion entity. This marks a new wave of telecommunications company consolidation in the next few months to come." They first tried to work out a merger five years ago, but finally, at long last, it's come to fruition.
Actually, this is not unusual for companies that have defense contracts, even with very friendly countries. There are laws stating that companies that deal with classified material and classified projects must be American. As a result, foreign-owned companies create American shell companies to handle all the details that the parent company is not allowed to work with.
My previous employer got bought out by the Swiss, and our Defense Team became a separate corporation owned by the parent company. It's standard operating procedure.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Actually, I think it's "allocate workers and resources in the most efficient manner". Apparently Lucent isn't an efficient place to allocate workers to, thus the market has moved them elsewhere.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".