those of us that remember the breakup, will know this for what it truly is.

behold the most authoritative confirmation yet.

after all the takeovers, there was much speculation. has the evil returned? has the corporate superweapon been rebuilt? assembled from updated, improved components, is the new version impervious where the old one was weak?

indeed, it is true: witness the new AT&T, with US$119.3 billion in revenue projected for 2007. there is nothing to fear from the US Department of Justice now (the man in charge of DOJ antitrust activities is a former lawyer for Microsoft in its own antitrust proceedings). all the Jedi are gone...

cue the obligatory quote:

"That's no moon..."

i am an old geek.

Fantastic.

Mr. Shubin, have you been smoking some of amanfromMars's stuff?

Still the best, brief explanation of AT&T from then to now:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4606495095994825594

@ Daniel

unfortunately, this is no hallucination (and seeing as the party you mentioned is conducting a hokey "medium produces Utopian message" web 2.0 research project, he'd be better off smoking something rather potent).

the US has not seen a monopolist of this magnitude for almost 20 years. the pre-breakup AT&T puts Microsoft in the shade.

i hope they're warmer and fuzzier now, otherwise we will have a real beast on our hands, a Standard Oil of telecom.