[IP] SkyBOX: The Pot, The Kettle & Google
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 16, 2006 6:58:39 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] SkyBOX: The Pot, The Kettle & Google
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
OTHER VOICES: by Evie Haskell evie@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Here's one you gotta love: Steve Ballmer says Google is a blooming
monopolist which poses a ... hang on now ... threat to "all media."
Yep, CEO of the company best known for its repeated attempts to gain,
and hold, a monopoly on all things computing is now pointing a finger
at Google as the potential monopolist de jour.
What Ballmer actually said in an interview with BusinessWeek: "What
Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of
rights holders into Google. So media companies around the world are
all threatened by Google." If a strong competitor doesn't step up
quickly, Ballmer continues, "You can short all media stocks right now."
Aside from the obvious, and self-serving, pot-calling-the-kettle-
black aspects of this, Ballmer makes some interesting points. Having
paid more than 1 percent of its market cap ($1.6 billion) to acquire
internet phenom YouTube, and having a finger in just about every
currently "hot" web-based property via either advertising deals or
direct investment, Google is arguably poised to dominate all things
internet. That, of course, includes video via internet. And if you
believe that the internet will continue to take up an ever larger
piece of the consumer media pie, then yes ... Google is moving into
position to gobble us all. Why else would Google honcho Eric Schmidt
be crisscrossing the country to assure various media barons that
Google is "not in the content business" and will vigorously defend
the copyrights of said barons?
Of course, the barons themselves are not so convinced. Time Warner's
Dick Parson's, for one, is on record as most definitely planning to
defend his company's rights over miscellaneous pieces of video and
music flitting across the 'net. Speaking to The Guardian, he recently
noted, "If you let one thing ignore your rights as an owner it makes
it much more difficult to defend those rights when the next guy comes
along."
So here we are folks, back in the trenches of digital media rights
with questions on exactly how the internet kaleidoscope might impact
our futures. It's not that we think the 'net will eclipse such forces
as DirecTV, Comcast, DISH etc anytime in the near future ... Just
look at the techno glitches currently hobbling various movie download
services to get your answer to that. But fact is that all things
internet are moving much, much faster than most media pundits have
expected. So keeping an eye on the latest wanna-be monopolists is
probably a very good idea.
www.SkyReport.com - used with permission
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