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Plaxo and Comcast

I’m still trying to make sense of the news that Comcast is buying
Plaxo (reported value of the deal between $100 and $200 M). I can’t
tell you how happy I am for Plaxo and especially Joseph Smarr who I
have great respect for (see our Technometria
interview with Joseph Smarr here).

Still, the discontinuity between what Plaxo is and what Comcast does
is jarring–at least on the surface. I believe there is a
fundamental conflict o interest between a company that does both
transmission of traffic and sells other Internet services. Yeah, I
know they all do it, but if the FCC wants to do something useful,
they ought to separate those functions.

The fact that they have little real competition leads to problems
like not
treating customer fairly and throttling
BitTorrent. That’s a problem–but one that I believe will work
itself out with more competition–and that’s going to come one way or
another. But the real problem is that Comcast offers many services
that directly compete against the traffic they carry. Do we expect
them to act in an unbiased manner in that regard? Sorry, I don’t.
Where’s the Anti-Trust Department when you need them?

Tags:

media

internet

itconversations

free teachers movies

Plaxo and Comcast

I’m still trying to make sense of the news that Comcast is buying
Plaxo (reported value of the deal between $100 and $200 M). I can’t
tell you how happy I am for Plaxo and especially Joseph Smarr who I
have great respect for (see our Technometria
interview with Joseph Smarr here).

Still, the discontinuity between what Plaxo is and what Comcast does
is jarring–at least on the surface. I believe there is a
fundamental conflict o interest between a company that does both
transmission of traffic and sells other Internet services. Yeah, I
know they all do it, but if the FCC wants to do something useful,
they ought to separate those functions.

The fact that they have little real competition leads to problems
like not
treating customer fairly and throttling
BitTorrent. That’s a problem–but one that I believe will work
itself out with more competition–and that’s going to come one way or
another. But the real problem is that Comcast offers many services
that directly compete against the traffic they carry. Do we expect
them to act in an unbiased manner in that regard? Sorry, I don’t.
Where’s the Anti-Trust Department when you need them?

Tags:

media

internet

itconversations