“When it comes to owning it all — content, infrastructure
and pipes — which company would likely be the lesser of two evils:
America Online or Microsoft? On Thursday, with the Federal
Communications Commission’s hearings in Washington on AOL’s
proposed takeover of Time Warner, all eyes are on the “other” Evil
Empire, AOL.”
“Surprise, surprise. AOL’s competitors, including Walt Disney
Co., NBC and Microsoft, think the AOL-Time Warner merger is a bad
idea. In today’s Washington Post, Disney lobbyist Preston Padden is
quoted as saying: “Bill Gates on his best day never dreamed of
having this much power and control. All he has is an operating
system. These people (AOL) are going to have the pipes, the
content, the applications, the hardware and the operating
system.”
“With the growing number of mega-mergers on the table, it seems
almost inevitable that our cyber-futures will be dictated by a
handful of monopolists. While it’s a nice pipe dream to think that
a white knight, like Sun’s StarOffice unit, will swoop in and keep
customer choice alive, such a possibility is pretty iffy.”