Word: aol
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...idea here is similar to what compelled Viacom to buy CBS and AOL to merge with Time Warner: joining content with distribution. In some sense, it is technology--or fear of technological change--that is driving these partnerships. Who knows in the high-speed, always-on, wireless world what is more valuable: content or distribution, programming or cable, music or the means to get the tunes to the listener...
...where Federal Trade Commission Chairman Robert Pitofsky calls the wave of mergers "unprecedented," regulators are scrutinizing matchups like AOL-Time Warner for indications that the partners might use their clout to deny rivals access to their networks. In part to fend off regulators, AOL last week filed plans to open its wildly popular instant-messaging system to other Internet providers. A Vivendi-Seagram deal would probably face less U.S. scrutiny, since most of its distribution channels would be in Europe. European regulators, however, will take a hard look, just as they said they would do last week with Time Warner...
...with aplomb. But as soon as I arrived at Harvard, I met Dave and Andre, and I was humbled like the ninth grader I had been. I had met Dave online that in-between summer. The instant I decided to go to Harvard I added that fact to my AOL profile, and he sent me a congratulatory note, having searched "Harvard" and "gay" and found a new name. He offered to show me around Cambridge when I arrived--"don't worry, I know plenty of cool people," he wrote. And so the day after my father closed the door...
Mario Monti doesn't necessarily hate America. The European Union's Competition Commissioner, the Joel Klein of the Continent, is Italian, after all, not French. But this week his commission moved to block the WorldCom-Sprint deal and launched an investigation into AOL-Time Warner (parent of this site), and in the past year it has started similar probes into deals by Boeing and Microsoft. Could Monti's evident distaste for American corporate marriages be less about antitrust law than geopolitics...
...Certainly, Europe's politicians and business leaders aren't complaining about Monti's moves against the high-tech mergers. To a continent still following America's lead on all things connected (except for cell phones), the threat of WorldCom or AOL owning too much of Europe's Internet plumbing is practically a matter of national security, or at least of national pride. It's worse than McDonald's, Coke and Nike all rolled into one, because even the Europeans know that high-tech telecom is the future of the world economy, and they're determined that globalization not mean - sacre...