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If net neutrality dies completely, Apple will take its 1/4 Trillion and buy a cable/phone company. Google likely will too. It's cheaper than having their custom
by coldcode 9y ago
If net neutrality dies completely, Apple will take its 1/4 Trillion and buy a cable/phone company. Google likely will too. It's cheaper than having their customers balkanized all over the place and having to pay monopoly rates to be allowed to connect to them.
- mattnewton 9y agoHonestly yes, this is likely to happen, because the alternative of the telecoms making their own android phones that use their own ad networks and web search and bleeding out the internet giants with pure market power is too much of an existential threat without their own carrier for negotiation purposes. Then we would have massive cash-out days for all the holders of carrier companies. Maybe these new subsidiaries of the frightful 5 would actually compete with each other? Or the ones that don't stumble in the transition at least. But of course we could have a totally different regulatory environment in 4 years.
- metaphorm 9y agothis could very well happen, and it raises the spectre of a truly bad outcome: permanently balkanized networks. "GoogleNet" and "AppleNet" and "VerizonNet" and no affordable interconnections between them. In other words, the end of the internet as we know it.