In the US, the Titans are about to clash. The results will likely be Huxlian. The collateral damage will be consumers & non-titan businesses. And the only one who seems to give a hoot are the nerds over at slashdot and Tim Wu.
Inept at running their own content services, broadband suppliers like Comcast and Time Warner want a little piece of Google’s action and to make certain Netflixs pays. They want a tiered internet. (Oh – and to buy NBC-Universal)
Apple is successfully pressing its own iPadded Brave New Worldian scheme. (Full disclosure, we have, ourselves, swallowed this particular bluepill)
And just to make sure they don’t come out untainted – The Do No Evil-doers at Google will soon have a piece of all advertising traffic on the American internet.
So far – we look ok safe in Europe but if it works in the US, it won’t be long before our Titan’s get the same idea. Dig this writing on-the-wall:
“O2 chief executive Ronan Dunne said last week that mobile networks should be paid by content producers for carrying their material.”
Tim Wu lays out the scenario in his book, “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.” And Slashdot, Techdirt & Boing Boing are sounding the warning. But other than that – silence.
Advertisers and non-google media should be paying attention. A tiered internet will not benefit us or you.
The Web is chaos. Lots of less-savory companies and individuals exploit this. But chaos is preferable to a handful of behemoths creating order to their exclusive benefit. A little disorder is preferable, we think, to the glass of kool-aid the titan’s would like to offer us to become their willing Beta consumers.
It has been fun. We hope it will remain fun. Even if we do engage in occasional wild-west hand-wringing.
Related articles
- Tim Wu Insists That Market Domination Is A Monopoly (techdirt.com)
