> When it comes to the Comcast merger, Franken was even more vocal. “As you probably know, I hate this merger,” he told the group. Not only will it raise prices on TV subscriptions, it will give the combined entity incredible power to stifle competition from online sources like Netflix. > > “I’m hearing that Comcast is already preparing to pull NBC Universal’s programming from Netflix when it’s next up for review,” Franken said. The cable industry is worried about the threat from cheaper options like Netflix; “they aren’t stupid and they want to shut it down.” > > Franken even referenced the [current controversy over Level 3’s peering arrangements with Comcast](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/comcastlevel3.ars/) (Level 3 just won a major contract from Netflix to deliver its content). Comcast’s move to charge for this interconnection is, in Franken’s view, “a clear warning sign of what we can all expect if this deal goes through.” > > As he was giving that speech, the merger did go through yesterday, signed off on by the FCC and the Department of Justice. As for what’s next, Franken just sees a new wave of mega-consolidation in which AT&T tries to buy ABC/Disney while Verizon goes after CBS. > > “Now is the time to decide if we want four or five companies owning and delivering all of our information and entertainment,” he said. I’m with Senator Franken on this. It’s no small matter. Not only are we going to see increased prices from less competition. Not only will good alternatives like Netflix get crushed under the weight of giant conglomerates; we’re also going to see even more stifling control over the media message in this country. It’s bad enough that stations like Fox News already have so much influence over a portion of our population. With mergers like the latest Comcast merger that went through yesterday, we may soon live in a country where ONLY stations like Fox News exist. All bias, all the time. Sort of a reverse of what England has with the BBC. Instead of the government running the networks, the networks will run our government.

Have no illusions. The 1% that have all the money in the U.S. have been working toward this goal for a very long time. Rather than controlling the population with an army, as you would in a dictatorship, they use the media to achieve the same goal in this democracy. They’ve owned radio for quite a while already. Television is the next frontier.

The Catholic Church understood in the days of the Holy Roman Empire that language was power. That’s why it never wanted the Bible translated into other languages. If only the priests knew latin, then only the priests could understand God’s word. And everyone else had to trust their interpretation. Control the message, and you control the population. Same basic principle here.

I fear it may already be too late to stop this.

> In language uncharacteristic of the normally objective-sounding *Consumer Reports* advice, even when concerning products like cars and cameras where buyers might have strong affiliations with a given brand, the posting described potential Verizon iPhone 4 adopters as “breathless” fanatics who were spendthrift and ignorant “addicts.” > > “You may want snap up this new offering if you’ve been waiting breathlessly for the iPhone to come to Verizon and don’t much care about 4G speed, a bigger screen, or other features found on current cutting-edge phones,” wrote Reynolds and Gikas. “Or if you’re prepared to pay an early termination fee to trade in the Verizon iPhone 4 for its successor when it appears. > > “The less iPhone-addicted consumer, on the other hand, may want to hold off for a newer version of the iPhone before even considering whether to buy one,” the report concluded. Consumer Reports can no longer be considered an objective source of information about anything. They made their money on the Antennagate linkbait, and they’ve made a clear choice to continue.

The Verizon iPhone isn’t out yet; they’ve had no opportunity to test the device at all. Yet here they are slamming it for a number of completely bogus reasons.

There might be a new one in six months? How many Android phones are going to come out in the next two months? Do you not recommend any of those?

Count Consumer Reports out of your decision-making process at this point. They are finished as a company.

> Bottom line, we are at an impasse in the evolution of HTML video. Having no baseline codec in the HTML specification is far from ideal. This is why we’re joining others in the community to invest in WebM and encouraging every browser vendor to adopt it for the emerging HTML video platform (the WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support in Safari and IE9). In other words, in Google’s fantasy utopia world, Safari and IE users would need to download a plugin to watch web video, as WebM becomes the standard used by everyone. Thus destroying everything that the video tag was invented to fix.

This is Google’s idea of open standards, people. Use any video codec you like, as long as its ours. Bend to our whims, or else we’ll take our ball and go home.

The more I read about and think about this bat shit crazy strategy of Google’s, the more I’m convinced that it can ONLY be a direct move against Apple. They want to kill h.264 because Apple has invested so heavily in it. Bring down the media empire. Sounds like a great plan. Until you realize that there’s no way in a million years that its’ actually going to happen.

Google is behaving here like a bully in a position of power. But it isn’t in any position to be making such moves. The only weapon in its arsenal is YouTube. But if YouTube stops working on every iPhone in the world tomorrow, there’s a much better chance that people will jump to some other free video site than replace their iPhones. There are plenty of companies that would love that opportunity to take that from Google. Heck, Apple could start a free video sharing web site and integrate it into iOS in a weekend.

If Chrome had 90% market share the way IE did back in the 90s, they could maybe pull something like this off. But now? It’s a pipe dream.

I’m starting to think that Eric Schmidt and company are losing it.

And for those few of you who still haven’t figured out that the whole “open” and “royalty free” debate holds no merit: What’s to prevent Google, who owns all the patents on WebM but has promised never to charge for WebM’s use, from waiting until WebM becomes the de facto standard, and THEN beginning to charge fees? A patent owned by one vendor (Google) is far more dangerous than one held by a consortium of companies (MPEG LA).

We weren’t at an impasse in the evolution in HTML video until Google made it so this week. H.264 was well on its way to becoming the official spec; Firefox had peaked in its growth and was months from needing to capitulate. Google is stirring the pot here just for spite. And their arguments to the contrary are simply not credible.

> Most people don’t read gadget blogs or even know what Android is. They generally hear about individual phones, without distinguishing much based on operating system. (They don’t know what those are, either.) Marco Arment is on a roll lately. His point here about Android is spot on, as usual.

Geeks who love Android have this fantasy that the majority of Android users are like them. They aren’t. Most people who bought an Android phone last year don’t know what Android is. They just went to their Verizon store and bought whatever the salesman pushed on them. There is no Android platform. There are only many, vaguely similar phones that happen to run Android. Gather all those sales figures all you want; the long-term success of Android is far from secure, because the majority of Android users are anything but loyal to the Android ecosystem.

It’s going to be an interesting year, watching Verizon sell iPhones and Android phones side by side. I hope Verizon releases detailed enough sales statistics to give us a clear picture of how these two “platforms” stack up when put next to each other on the sales floor.

> [](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/12/ios-4-3-beta-brings-software-option-for-rotation-lock-or-mute-on-ipad#) > One of the more controversial changes made with the release of iOS 4.2 late last year was a change in the functionality of the [switch](http://www.macrumors.com/2010/09/15/ipads-orientation-lock-switch-becomes-mute-switch-with-ios-4-2/) on the side of the iPad, moving it from a screen rotation lock to a mute switch as seen on the iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs had even reportedly [responded](http://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/24/ipad-os-4-2-orientation-lock-to-mute-switch-change-permanent/) to a customer question by noting that the change was permanent and that it would not be a user-configurable option. > > Apple appears to have had a change of heart, as today’s iOS 4.3 beta appears to have [added an option](http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=11714118&postcount=58) in the device’s Settings application to allow users to customize the behavior of the switch. I haven’t been this happy to have been [wrong](http://jcieplinski.posterous.com/on-the-ipad-muteorientation-lock-controversy) in a long time. Apple seems to have seen the light on this one.