venture capitalism and you!

i may be a day late and a dollar short on this one, but i saved the following link in my gmail inbox for over two months because it bugged me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601624.html?referrer=emailarticle

i'm finally getting around to venting my thoughts on it, and i'm sure they're not much different than any other web user's.

in case the article is gone or otherwise unreadable, let me break it down for you: Verizon Com. Inc. is accusing companies like Google and Yahoo of "freeloading" on networks they've spent billions of dollars creating. to quote John Thorne, a senior VP at Verizon: "(Google, Yahoo) is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers." essentially, Thorne wants Google and Yahoo to have to pay to provide Verizon (or AT&T) customers to access their sites.

(WARNING: TOTALLY BIASED ARGUMENT AHEAD)

Mr. Thorne, would you like some cheese to go with that whine? put on your big-girl panties and deal with it. the concept of the internet is not to provide you and companies like yours with a captive audience to whom you can market what you will. (incidentally, i've been to verizon.net. the login and search fields are all but obscured by ads and promotions. who are you to tell me 'what's hot'?)

i did, however, like your comparison of the so-called 'Google utopianism' with 'spiked kool aid'. i liken it more to the red pill and the blue pill (fyi, sir, that's a reference from 'the matrix.' if you haven't already, i suggest you watch it. guess which character i picture you as?) in this internet, you can choose to take the pill which will allow you to see the world as it truly is and decide the course of it for yourself, or you can choose to take the pill which will allow you to slip blissfully unaware into passive consumption, where you accept what the corporations sell you, consume what you're told you to, see and believe only what they show you.

Mr. Thorne, your company is not suffering. while you tout the 'poor me' argument in hopes of overturning so-called 'barriers' enforced by the government, you fail to realize that the true power lies with the consumer. even if, through some magic loophole, your company is able to restrict the content your customers can access through your service, your customers will soon find out that the grass is truly greener on the other side. they will leave you for the pastures of those companies that realize the only way to maintain a customer base is to offer the customer the freedom of true choice, and that includes opting to use the google homepage instead of the service provider's. it sucks for you, but it’s the only way. your customers have paid you to provide them internet service, and if you want to set up a toll booth in the middle of the information superhighway, you’re going to get a lot less traffic.


p.s for those of you who are concerned about maintaining a truly free internet, check out the recent posting by Sen John Kerry (D-MA) on savetheinternet.com by clicking here.