CNN (a Time Warner company) broadcasted the press conference, where consumers exposed their worries about the merger with AOL.
Mark Cooper is just one visible face of Consumers against the merger. He represents the Consumer Federation of America.
"I Love You", says AOL to Time Warner...
Jeffrey Hunker of the US Security Council is just one visible face of the Government effort to win the Internet war, before it is fought.
TV coverage about Internet security shows this hardware, but the fight is on the software level.
Last 10 January 2000, America OnLine (AOL) announced plans to buy Time Warner (TW), in a stock transaction nearly worth 165 billion USD. There is too much money involved, that this potential deal must receive the USA's government approval, mainly because it is about services that are weighting more & more on the contry's Economy.
The USA is, by far, the country that provides more and better Internet services. These services are of growing influence, and we simply can't foresee when they will become less relevant.
If approved, this deal will be the largest merger in history, which is impressive, but not as impressive as AOL being just 11 years old... The "new media" (Internet) company, will probably succeed on the buy of the "old media" reference (television, magazines, film production), but there are problems...
In late April 2000, some consumer associations started protesting against the merger, and with reason... It seems strange that the USA's government is trying to break Microsoft in 2 or more distinct companies, under the excuse that "that would benefit consumers", yet it is about to allow such a gigantic (and diverse) fusion.
As Mark Cooper (Consumer Federation of America) remembers, AOL already controls more than one half of the broad band Internet accesses in the USA... not forgetting half of the regular analogue modem customers. On other words, it seems that half of America is being served by AOL!
Small ISPs are also protesting the merger, under the argument that they won't be able to compete with such a giant. AOL is also known for having kept its messenger service "closed" too long - notice that only very recently, 3rd party software was able to support communication with the AOL machines - and such a fact does transmit a greedy image of the company.
The Consumers' Associations are proposing some measures, so the deal can advance. These measures are about AT&T divestiture of Time Warner holdings, and AOL divestiture of DIRECTV.
General opinion is that the merger will happen, but with some tweaks, relative to what AOL and TW first desired.
Personally, I don't see a problem with a merger of this kind. The companies are kind of operating on opposite media ("new" and "old", remember?)... and the deal will just oblige other (smaller) companies to do the same, if they are to survive. It can be good to the overal competitiveness of the Markets.
In fact, I also disagree about the "predatory" issues against Microsoft, but that is one other subject.
It is obvious that the Internet grew too big, and, just like everything that is very much wanted, there will be wars, for some kind of domination. We already had the "browser war" (won by Microsoft's Internet Explorer?), but the fights that are to happen, can get bloody. Literally.
Recent brute force attacks against popular websites, showed how the network can easily be brought to its knees, without much intelligence.
If the Internet is to evolve, a much better (software) protection of servers must happen, so a service never stops providing. If such a reliability is achieved, many new scenarios will emerge, including remote life supporting systems.
The USA's Government is promoting the discussion of these issues, and is "opening hand of previously confidential information"! Are there uncommented TCP / IP issues?
"Would you like to marry me?" Asks AOL. "Sure, but first we must wait for the government's approval)", answers Time Warner.
Steve Case (AOL) and Gerald Levin (TW) are now just waiting for a 165 billion USDs permission.
HUBs, Routers, and dummy gates are what the picture shows. White cables are normally regular 100 Mbps Ethernet LAN inter connectors.
Blue cables are often fiber optic conductors, capable of much higher bandwidth, than 100 Mbps. The Internet 2 is being built on these and other more advanced structures.