Comcast buys Plaxo, which is making me really thank everyone that I never really got into plaxo, and while I am a comcast customer, it might be time to bail. Here is the nightmare scenario, comcast knows what I watch, and if I used plaxo it will also know my friends, and they will monitor what I watch, what I download, where I surf. Let alone all the traffic shaping controversies of the last year.
Habits, friends, what I watch, all owned by one company. If you bought the comcast package of services just add to that list.
This is the company that wanted to add a video camera to their set top boxes to know who was in the room.
Sorry if I am not convinced that this is the greatest deal in the world, many of the privacy, security, and personal issues are going to fly under the wire given the number of folks who are all thinking this is a great idea (back to techmeme).
Frankly it might be a great deal from the business side, but for everyone else, it might not be a great deal. When the first egregious privacy issue arises, everyone will freak out, and they need to. But right now you can do something for yourself, find the competitor that doesn’t have the same ethical challenges that comcast has.
ReadWriteWeb brings up the same questions on ethics that we are, two ethically challenged companies merging is not all that great for the customers. The most troublesome is that customers are going to remain blissfully unaware of the controversy until there is a major incident somewhere in the chain. While those that are technically savvy can figure this one out fairly quickly, the average person who is able to barely surf the Internet, they are going to be the real losers in this deal. They won’t know, they don’t want to know.
This also bring ups one other nagging issue of the “walled garden”, if Comcast is able to make their own “AOL Equivalent” as a walled garden of services and goods only for comcast customers, everyone will loose here as well. Walled gardens, traffic shaping, advertising, and a total life media intersection, on an ISP that has issues, this might not be a good thing for customers.
Tags: comcast, plaxo, buy out, deal, bad, customers, ethics, challenges, privacy, issues
