BS is an abbreviation for BellSouth, whose chief technical officer Bill Smith told the media his firm has taken the call for multi-tiered Internet connectivity to the big Internet players; Jeff Pulver suggests the online powers-that-be hit BellSouth first, but it won’t happen for one simple reason: money.
“Turn off BellSouth!” Pulver posted in his recent blog entry. He recommends that, instead of sitting back and paying off service providers like BellSouth and SBC who demand more cash to ensure better connections, Google and others need to show them the door, a solidly closed door, that is.
Pulver’s suggestion called for Google to cut off BellSouth first:
Given the market power that Google has today, they are more relevant to the Internet community than BellSouth….I would choose to implement a BellSouth Boycott and stop offering access to Google to BellSouth customers and would start advertising Cox Cable service on any requests that came from BellSouth customers in their regions. I’m willing to wager that by Q3 2006, BellSouth’s DSL group will feel the effects of their grave error in judgment.
In his post, Pulver noted how help from Washington DC lawmakers will be slow in arriving: “(W)e don’t have the time to wait for this to get on the national agenda of Congress and then weigh in with their approach.”
A Google boycott wouldn’t just get a rise out of BellSouth customers. If it were implemented to deny delivery of advertisements in AdSense blocks displayed by site publishers when requested by a BellSouth DSL user, there would be a huge outcry. Small advertisers would complain, but the real big companies could make even more effective complaints, like placing full-page ads in papers like USA Today or the Wall Street Journal.
That scenario, enjoyable though it may be to consider, isn’t going to happen. AdWords is the double-edged sword that would cut Google even as Google cut off BellSouth. Google is first and foremost an advertising company. It makes far more money from search ads than it does from AdSense placements on sites that use it.
For Google to show BellSouth the door, they have to accept the loss of search ad revenue while they wait for either the customers to switch providers or BellSouth to back down. That’s a bet Google won’t be willing to make, no matter how much IPO cash they still have on their side of the table.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
