[2Jim_Brown]

Some companies from the surviving Baby Bells say that they may someday charge fees to digital businesses.

[DaveyB]

Let's kill the golden goose then we will get more gold eggs...

[cinives]

Hello, what are they talking about ? Digital Businesses pay fees to telecom companies to carry the internet traffic. If the fees aren't big enough, the telecom companies need to adjust their rates.

This is pure BS, plain and simple. If I buy a T1 connection to the internet, I am paying for a 1.54 MB bandwidth. Are they telling me that Yahoo, Google and the like aren't paying as much as I am for the same bandwidth ?

[KarlInOhio]

Google can fight dirty on this too. Just imagine a search result screen like this:

No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.

Your search - star - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.
• Recommended: Switch to an ISP that doesn't charge Google extra. Here are some suggestions...

How would AT&T feel about losing their DSL customers to companies that don't charge web sites extra money?

[zeugma]

The explicit rationale? These firms are taking up too much bandwidth.

This is bullcrap. Google pays for bandwidth, and I pay for bandwidth. The "pipe" owners are already making money on both sides. They are just trying to get into something other than a commodity business.