alt Hacker NewsNilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/1004286/senator-adam-schiff...
> One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law.
Checks out:
Jan 11, 2001: AOL and Time Warner merged to create AOL Time Warner
June 14, 2018: AT&T acquired Time Warner, renamed WarnerMedia
April 8, 2022: WarnerMedia spun out of AT&T, merged with Discovery
Replies
Oh this is hilarious. Didn't AT&T also acquire HBO and spin them off too?
Companies wasting their money is the company's problem and it's really unclear to me why the government should give a single damn.
March, 1989: Time and Warner announce merger, Paramount launches hostile bid for Time. January, 1990: Time responds by buying Warner Communications for $14 billion.
...Paramount sulks, and bides its time....
I was at HBO during the AOL merger, and for a time my work email became [email protected], because AOL corporate email shared namespace with its customers, and my personal AOL account was… [email protected]