9/16/2005
Maniacal Merger
We know this from breeding animals, or plants that when you take one bad example of a given breed and cross it with another bad example, the results is usually worse than either parent. Corporate mergers and alliances have shown this as well. The Sony and Ericsson partnership created some of the most difficult to use and worst performing cellular phones in the history of the industry. Now there's a potential merger between AOL and MSN. This is certainly the business equivalent of Ghengis Khan and Attila the Hun forming common cause. While it will undoubtedly be touted as 'good for the consumer' just like the Cingular/ATT and Sprint/Nextel mergers, neither of those two merged entities has what can be called good customer service. True, this may just become another of the unkillable rumors like the one concerning the potential sale of Deutsche Telekom's favorite cash cow T-Mobile USA. The rumored sale has been shot down numerous times by in the past two years but it returns more often than acid reflux. And while this deal could fail and rescue us from the dismay inherent in the knowledge than not only did someone let Mariah Carey release another album, but that Brittany Spears pregnancy was not the publicity stunt we all hoped, this appears to be one of those things that is too bad not to happen.
