AT&T Now Thinks It Understands a Google Method
October 18, 2009
Keep in mind that Google is now 11 years old. The company has been zipping along, making explicit its technology in papers available from the Google Labs’s Web pages and disclosing its inventions in its patent applications.. Google executives turn up an technical conferences and watch as happy graduate students report on some Google experiment. In short, the Google has been quite forthcoming about what the firm does. The problem is that Google talks in equations, data analyses, and references to methods that require some experience in disciplines ranging from theoretical physics to psychology. Individuals lacking either the time, the motivation, or the intellectual tools fall back on the lowest common denominators when thinking about Google; to wit, search and advertising.
When I read “AT&T: Google Manipulates Media, is an Abusive, Power Hungry Monopoly”, I realized that this giant telephone company has been remiss in conducting basic analysis of Google’s business and technical methods. Now that Google is squeezing the oxygen tube for some telecommunications companies, AT&T is waking up to the brave new world Google has created around AT&T. AT&T makes clear, if the story is accurate, that it saw Google as a fish in the AT&T aquarium. The new perception is that AT&T is a fish in the Google aquarium. AT&T does not like this insight.
The article reported:
The letter claims that Google’s explanation that it is only blocking certain kinds of rural calls like adult sex-chat lines, to avoid high fees leveled against the free service, is a lie. The letter accuses Google of conspiracy, saying it also blocked calls to an ambulance service, church, bank, law firm, automobile dealer, day spa, orchard, health clinic, tax preparation service, community center, eye doctor, tribal community college, school, residential consumers, a convent of Benedictine nuns, and the campaign office of a U.S. Representative. According to AT&T, Google is “abus[ing] its market power”. AT&T insists Google is not exempt, either from being free or being internet-based, from federal regulations that prevent such call blocking. he letter also calls Google a monopoly, citing, “In preparing a complaint to challenge the Google/Yahoo arrangement, the [U.S.] Department [of Justice] reportedly concluded that Google had a “monopoly” in these markets and the proposed arrangement “would have furthered [Google’s] monopoly.” Furthermore, AT&T accuses Google of practicing broad-scale manipulation of the media. It says that Google blocked political advertisements from Senator Susan Collins, due to her criticism of Moveon.org, a Google net neutrality partner. It also accuses Google of blocking the Inner City Press from Google News, as the publication criticized the United Nation Development Programme, a Google-sponsored program.
Great stuff. Several comments:
When I was working with a high end consulting firm a couple of years ago, we did Google briefings at five or six telecommunications companies. One company told my partner, “We know what Google is doing. We don’t need a briefing.” If this article is accurate, not only did AT&T need our briefing, AT&T needed a more effective competitive intelligence and business analysis unit.
In my opinion, AT&T, among other telecommunications firms, have given Google plenty of time to build out its infrastructure, refine its technology, and enter traditional telco markets in unorthodox ways. Now that the window shades have gone up, the new day is well underway.
Like Microsoft, telcos are going to have to work overtime to find ways to leapfrog Google. Catch up won’t work. Not only is a catch up game going to cost lots of money and not slow Google’s forward movement, catch up means that Google will have more time to take advantage of customers who want Googley services.
Bad, bad news.
I find it amusing that the present day AT&T is complaining because Google has become the new GT&T; that is, Google Telephone & Telegraph. Instead of the wireless model, Google has taken some lessons from the “old” AT&T and added a
Googley twist. The result is that a company well versed in monopolistic techniques has recognized that Google has learned some tricks from the Zen masters themselves.
Google does not lock in customers with prohibitions on non Western Electric hardware. Google lets its products and services work like magnets. AT&T, reeling from the iPhone bandwidth challenges, is looking at Google in a more realistic way, but does AT&T understand the changes Google has made in the “old” AT&T’s business model. GT&T is just one unit of the real Google. There are five or six other units that are equally disruptive.
Eleven years. Is this a Rip Van Winkle approach to competitive analysis?
Stephen Arnold, October 18, 2009
Not so much as a call credit for this essay.
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
