how the fuck does Whitacre think companies like Google and Yahoo! get "on the Internet" to begin with? Hint, those T-1's aren't "free". Alos, don't Yahoo! and SBC have a go-to-market deal around DSL anyways, so isn't SBC essentially acknowledging that without access to these sites their DSL wouldn't necessarily be that valueable to customers. How likely would you be to sign up for SBC's DSL service if you knew that you couldn't get to Google?
Link: Techdirt:SBC: We Own The Internet, So Google Should Pay Up.
So is it really any surprise to hear the CEO of SBC, Ed Whitacre, in an interview suggest that it's only a matter of time before they start going after any of the services that make the internet useful to try to make them pay up to remain reachable?
Couldn't agree more. A powerless threat.
Posted by: Randy Charles Morin | Oct 31, 2005 at 08:35 PM