Man, we admit it-- not being Big Business™ type people makes following all these mergers, buyouts, and investments a real trial. Case in point: MediaOne Group, Inc. MediaOne is a cable television provider that also provides broadband cable modem Internet access under the name of "MediaOne Express." Now, down at the AtAT studios, our cable provider isn't MediaOne; it's Time Warner Cable. MediaOne covers most of the surrounding cities, but our little burg gets Time Warner. Time Warner is rolling out cable modem access in our area under the Road Runner name, so that's what we've got. So far, that's not all that complicated.

But Time Warner and MediaOne recently inked a deal that has all local MediaOne Express customers soon to be using "MediaOne Road Runner" instead, so something's going on there. In addition, communications giant ComCast was poised to buy MediaOne outright, but instead, AT&T jumped in at the last minute instead. So AT&T is buying MediaOne, who has some kind of deal with Time Warner regarding high-speed Internet access, at least in our vicinity. And now here's the kicker: according to a Reuters story, Microsoft is close to investing about $5 billion in AT&T, which would give them a "2 or 3 percent stake" in a company who's now a huge player in the high-speed 'net access game.

Which apparently all means that, if we follow the trail of corporate money, AtAT's Internet access may soon be partially controlled by Microsoft. A 2-3% stake in AT&T doesn't sound like all that much to us, but at least some analysts think otherwise. Scott McAdams, for instance, says "this is for all the marbles. If they get AT&T -- and it sounds like they're going to get in there -- then they've won." That means Windows CE in cable television set-top boxes and Microsoft's hooks in broadband access. Could be spooky, and trying to follow all the connections makes our collective heads spin. In the meantime, we're going to enjoy our cable modem before somebody screws it up. You just gotta love being able to download the 22 MB Q3TEST in three minutes.