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Skriven 2005-09-16 07:28:38 av Greg Sears (3:633/104)
     Kommentar till en text av Cindy Haglund
Ärende: F unny
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Would you like your conglomerate super sized?
by Joe Lavin -- http://joelavin.com

So it has been quite a week for merger and monopoly news. First, we had
the massive America Online-Time Warner merger, creating a company
that will own everything from Netscape and CNN to MovieFone and
World Championship Wrestling. With the merger, dull Steve Case of
AOL has suddenly become a media mogul overnight. Hand out a few
million free disks, and apparently you can have the world. Who knew?
(Not that I should complain. For a while there, almost every blank disk I
owned was an erased AOL disk.)

With this latest merger, we're down to about six major media companies.
Of course, while I'm writing this, a few more could always merge. You
never know with them. It is a bit disconcerting for so few companies to
be owning so much, but Steve Case and Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin
are spinning this deal as one that will help the consumer more than
anyone else. As Levin told PBS' Jim Lehrer, "We're going to try and make
a better world."

In the future, for example, we will be able to buy a product that we see
on television with just the click of a remote. In the future, we will be
able to watch a movie on our Palm Pilot while stuck in traffic. In the
future, we will be able to surf the net in the corner of our television
while watching a sitcom as the price of all our stocks crawls across the
bottom of the screen. In the future, we could also have a massive
headache.

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, the Department of Justice started
leaking news that it may try to split up the Microsoft monopoly.
Essentially, we were given one new monopoly this week (AOL Time
Warner) while an older one (Microsoft) may be taken away. On the whole
"getting screwed over by massive corporations" scale, I guess the week
was pretty much a draw.

The very latest gossip calls for Microsoft to be split into three
companies -- one for software, one for operating systems, and a third
company that will concentrate exclusively on annoying the hell out of
you with tons of error messages and that damn paper clip. As you can
imagine, it's the third company, which will probably end up being the
biggest.

Actually, the real plan is for Microsoft to be split into one software
company, and two competing companies that would sell operating
systems. This way, no one company will be able to control our desktops
with Windows. But amidst all this speculation is one confusing question:
Which company gets Bill Gates? It's a problem that no one knows how to
solve.

Theoretically, the company with Bill Gates will have an unfair advantage,
though I would argue the opposite. Most consumers hate Bill Gates so
much that they will probably flock to the non-Bill Microsoft in a
heartbeat. I only hope that Microsoft doesn't try to solve the problem by
cloning Bill.

Then again, this may no longer be important. On Thursday, Bill Gates
actually gave up day-to-day control of Microsoft, probably hoping that,
without him officially in charge, Microsoft won't be hated quite as much.
Bill will, of course, remain the de facto leader, but, instead of CEO,
he's now the "chief software architect." Whatever that means. His new job
will be to concentrate on Microsoft's future business strategy and to
find new ways in which Microsoft can enrich all of our lives.

"Hey, guys, how about if we have the paper clip pop up every single
time they start their computer? Wouldn't that be great?"

One final note about Bill Gates. On Friday, the Washington Post listed
his net worth as "close to $90 billion," while Reuters would only say
that he's worth "over $80 billion." Whatever you think about Bill Gates,
you have to admit one thing. It's rather impressive when the rounding
error on your net worth is about $10 billion.

That's just the kind of rounding error I'd like in my bank account.
Copyright 2000 by Joe Lavin

_________
Joe Lavin's Humor Column is published at
http://joelavin.com

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>      .-.
>    .(  °> Cheers,
>   //)'')  from the
>  ///''/   I C E-man
> //-"-"-------------

... Here's some fun:  Walk into an antique shop and say, "What's new?!?"

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 * Origin: Afraid of the competition? We ARE the Competition! (3:633/104)