AT&T ts, love letters or hate mail? As always, feel free got the green light from DOJ trustbusters on its
multibillion-dollar MediaOne merger deal. But under
the terms of approval, Ma Bell has to auction off MediaOne’s stake in Road Runner by the end of the year.
Okay, we already knew this move was coming and it sounded fair enough.
Except for a few details. AT&T is forced to dump the veggies, but gets to
keep Road Runner’s meat and potatoes. The fat pipe provider’s subscriber
base and technology will just get rolled into its big brother
Excite@Home . That’s no skin off AT&T’s back, and
it leaves Road Runner dead in the water.
Did anyone tell the Justice boys these two ISPs already boast nearly three
quarters of the high-speed cable access market? This latest window dressing
looks a lot like the tail wagging the dog. I don’t pretend to be a fan of
the ’96 Telecom Act, but if government is serious about collaring
consolidation that pumps up prices, roughs up competition, and limits
diversity of ownership, they sure don’t show it.
Do Not Pass GoTo, Do Not Collect $200
Vegas odds didn’t favor GoTo.com knocking Mickey
to the canvas, but the underdog put the champ down with a legal TKO early
this week over its year-old trademark brouhaha. The pay-for-play search
engine slapped Disney with an infringement suit
after the media giant’s newly unveiled logo looked curiously similar to its
own.
Both bore a striking
resemblance
to the other, fashioned after a green stoplight, with the words GO
emblazoned across it. The idealab!-backed start-up scrambled to have
Disney’s GO.com yank the look-alike for
fear of any dilution to its corporate identity. Well, apparently the courts
felt in kind, and GoTo.com walked away
with a $20 million payday for its troubles.
I’ve got two observations. First, I thought Disney’s original logo
was way better than GoTo.com’s ever was. But since that’s a moot
point now, Disney brass needs to spend a little cash to hire a designer to
get that ugly interim logo replaced with
something respectable. I do believe this is the same company that burned a
quarter of a billion dollars last year. Heck, I’ll even dust off my pastels
over the holiday weekend to lend a hand if they need it.
Who Wants to Be a Net Millionaire?
I’d like to wrap it up ahead of the Memorial Day weekend with this bit of
shared humor. Let me see a show of hands for those of you who caught
Wednesday’s episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? How many of
you Web heads have been pondering the possibility of using your lifeline to
“phone a friend” that has a broadband Net connection to look up the answer?
Yeah, me too.
Well I guess we all know the answer to that conundrum. Regis sat patiently
listening to the contestant’s “phone a friend” feverishly pounding away on
his keyboard in the background searching for the answer on the Web. The
Cheshire grin Regis wore reminded me of the teacher who finds their student
cheating on the final exam.
As if that weren’t bad enough, a 50/50 lifeline left the “friend” with only
two answers to choose from. And, he still picked the wrong one. Ouch.
In response to yesterday’s b2bstores’ column,
Who Left the Seat Up?, one astute reader replied:
Kelly,
As we say out here in ski country, “Don’t eat the yellow snow!”
Kent
Denver, CO
Touche
Any questions or commen
to forward them to kblack@internet.com.
Red Light, Green Light
