| reply to fAcEtIOUs
Re: WHY did they drop it not mentioned Honestly...how many people do you think even knew about the Flickr subsidy? I've been an AT&T internet user for years and never heard of the discount. AT&T ain't no fool. I'm sure they analyzed their customer base to determine the % of customers that truly utilized the premium Flickr membership offer and determined they could cut it loose without much negative publicity. Besides, AT&T has had as rocky relationship with Yahoo in recent years concerning the co-branding of broadband service. Before the name change from SBC to AT&T, Yahoo used to get a large annual payment from AT&T because Yahoo was responsible for both marketing to and activating new AT&T broadband customers. This service was branded under the SBC Yahoo! Broadband (DSL) moniker or something to that effect. I believe that contract was cancelled outwrite as the "new AT&T" in-sourced that operation so that the Yahoo name didn't dilute the AT&T brand and/or confuse existing/new customers. I could be wrong, but I remember reading an article a year or so ago that stated that the old SBC paid Yahoo roughly 400 million annually for that service and cancelled the contract completely. This was one of the reasons why Microsoft was not so inclined to up the ante on their original offer for Yahoo!. The loss of such a big contract was handwriting on the wall. I suspect that the free Flickr add-on was merely a last minute component to the Yahoo deal that had a slighly longer expiration date than that of the master marketing agreement. It may also have been something that Yahoo added on late in the game as an attempt to increase the stickiness of its original contract with SBC, to no avail. Even if Yahoo had no prior relations with SBC/AT&T, it does make business sense for AT&T to sever ties now. If a net neutrality debate re-ignites during Obama's administration, it is best that all ISP's (AT&T & otherwise) distance themselves as much as they can from content providers of all genres. The argument that content providers are getting away with murder by eating up ISP's internet capacity when the ISP's and content providers are sleeping the same bed won't make much of a case in front of the FCC. |
