This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.
News of Comcast's proposed $44 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable hit the Internet late Wednesday night. Instantly, there was rejoicing. Grateful TWC users sent teary-eyed congratulations to each other, nostalgia for their current cable provider already mingling with sweet anticipatory delight over its new owners. Meanwhile, Comcast's millions of satisfied customers broke out the champagne and welcomed their new brethren to the greatest entertainment experience on Earth.
Done laughing yet? No, of course, none of that happened. Both companies are so regularly loathed by users, so widely perceived to be uncaring monopolies, that news of the deal acted like a force multiplier. If you were watching the reaction on Twitter — and it was pretty much universal — you got a taste of what might happen if Hell were to announce it had bought Purgatory.
See also: People Generally Just Really Hate Their Cable Companies
If there's one kind of company America hates, historically speaking, it's an aggressive monopoly. Go back and look at contemporary opinions of Standard Oil, Ma Bell, Microsoft in the 1990s, and the many trusts of the Gilded Age, and you'll see echoes of the anti-Comcast reaction. We'll tolerate these giants if they're generally considered good monopolies, we may even tolerate them for a while if they're bad monopolies. But when a bad monopoly gets greedy enough to buy another bad monopoly, we tend to know it's time to grumble and dust off our various legal pitchforks.
America has a strongly-attuned if sometimes dormant sense of fairness. That is the sleeping giant. And Comcast just blew a blast in its ear.
See also: The National Domination of Comcast and Time Warner in 1 Map
Even Comcast itself barely seemed to pretend the takeover would be good for the average user. It made a half-hearted stab in its official press release, near the bottom, after paragraphs of explanation on why the deal would make a great deal of sense for shareholders: "Through this merger, more American consumers will benefit from technological innovations, including a superior video experience, higher broadband speeds, and the fastest in-home Wi-Fi." No further explanation was offered. Skeptical eyebrows were raised.
Full disclosure: I'm a Comcast customer, cable Internet only. I don't actually have that many personal complaints about the company in the two years I've been paying them, except that the speed can be iffy in the evening, their online interface sucks, and it's hard to get a helpful human on the phone. But that's how dismal the industry is: I never expected better anyway. I wasn't that inclined to switch when AT&T moved a new U-Verse wireless set-up into our neighborhood. Inertia ruled.
But right after the Comcast news broke, we suddenly found ourselves on Team U-Verse. The news didn't affect us personally (because as we know by now, the two cable companies do not actually compete in any markets); it didn't have to. It affected our sense of fairness. It killed our hopes for net neutrality. It was the equivalent, in terms of market share, of Google buying Facebook. There's too big to fail, and then there's too big to rightfully exist. My wife was more outraged by the lop-sided size of the new company ("how can they ... why ... what the ...") than she was about the grisly images from Copenhagen Zoo — and she's a big fan of giraffes.
See also: Will Comcast and Time Warner Cable Sink Net Neutrality?
This is how it happens, little by little, customer by customer. This is how you lose a business empire. This is why Microsoft went from the center of the universe in 1995 to the tech industry also-ran it is today: enough early-adopter types were irked by the company's product, not to mention its monopolistic arm-twisting of other companies as detailed in a bruising courtroom battle with the Justice Department. Though the DoJ won, it wasn't legal sanction that got to Microsoft. It was reputation.
I used Windows in the late 1990s. Practically everyone did. But I was ready to make the jump whenever a real alternative presented itself — and I certainly wasn't inclined to look for Windows when it came to next-generation technology such as smartphones. It turned out I wasn't alone. Hello, iOS; hello Android (which Microsoft is now apparently discussing bringing into the Windows fold).
Comcast is already losing cable subscribers by the millions. It insists on selling bundles of cable channels rather than a la carte, making it ever more tempting for the average user to cut the cord and go use Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or a host of other video services. But like the honey badger, Comcast don't care. It's even offering to divest itself of another three million subscribers as part of the deal. That's because the deal, as we also know, is about acquiring broadband supremacy and the ability to leverage content companies. Let Netflix win: Comcast will control the pipes Netflix reaches most of its customers on.
See also: Two Cheers for the Comcast-Time Warner Deal
But battling for broadband supremacy — and potentially instilling more data caps when you get it — means you're taking on the Internet. Taking on the Internet means you're taking on social media. And you really don't want an argument with social media, even if it is often slow to action (and completely missed the memo on The Day We Fight Back). You're looking at the force that brought down SOPA, that changed governments in the Middle East. It can certainly organize a simple boycott, or increase levels of chatter around DSL services, or talk up Aereo. It might even persuade Google to make a major investment in Google Fiber rather than just treat the alternative service as a pastime.
So if the FCC does actually approve this deal, nine months or so down the line, it might just be the kick up the pants we all need. There'll be no more illusion about what the cable industry is, no more pretense of competition between members of a non-competing cartel. In one corner of the Internet you'll have the 21st century's answer to The Phone Company, boosting prices and extracting fees from content delivery services such as Netflix to not slow their traffic down. In the other corner you'll have everyone else and every other technology except cable: DSL, Wi-Max, satellite, even LTE. You'll have every entrepreneur who's eager to cater to a growing "Anyone But Comcast" demographic. Let the games begin.