The Last Page
The Information Sidewalk
By Michael Swaine
mswaine@cruzio.com
It was just another typical American corporate catfight. Microsoft wanted to link from its Microsoft Sidewalk Webthing into Ticketmonster's online Ticketinfothing. Ticketmonster didn't like the part of the deal where it wakes up with a horse's head, and said no way.
Microsoft said oh I think so, and linked in anyway, right into Ticketmonster's fleshy belly. Ticketmonster set the legal hounds on them, which ticked off Paul Allen, who owned almost half of Ticketmonster and has a friend at Microsoft, and he unloaded his Ticketmonster stock to Home Shopping Network's corporate parental unit, which proceeded to buy enough additional shares to control Ticketmonster. You don't say no way to Microsoft.
Sidewalk. That's the word, all right. The Net is a sidewalk.
Ticketmonster thought it could control how Net strollers access its site. But nobody wants to be netnannied out on the Information Sidewalk. Under the flashing neon banners, the hucksters and the professional ladies troll for eyeballs where vermal boys spraypaint the pavement with 3D graffiti that leaves your browser gasping as you navigate around the surfers and sidewalk sitters down on their luck or hope sucking up bandwidth, and you turn at the next corner just because you can and it's open and it's wild and it's gorgeous and it's Bourbon Street on Fat Tuesday. Anything goes. Watch your wallet.
It's a sidewalk out there.
Ticketmonster isn't the only site owner kidding itself that it can or should control where visitors go. Think of all the sites that hide their goodies under gaudy home pages and tunnels festooned with gratuitous graphics.
Think of that architypal Web-site model, the central home page with nothing but links to other pages.
