It's sometimes useful to think of the internet as a lot like real life, only more so -- whatever actually exists between human beings in a state of nature will turn up there, in some exaggerated form of itself. This extends to the universal struggle for power, an imperative that gets expressed in some strange forms on the Web. This past week saw a number of very modern approaches to very ancient concerns: autonomy, opportunity, the weak gathering with the strong.
Without representation
Users of Turbo Tax, a tax software package offered by Intuit Inc., rose their voices in anger recently, when they began loading up the 2008 version of the program and discovered a new $9.95 charge for filing electronic returns other than their own. If you do taxes for your mom, your kids and your niece, it's an additional $9.95 to print or e-file each return.
Turbo Tax is the program used by the majority of Americans who use tax software, and their collective pique was a force to behold. The word "ballistic" comes to mind. The software's Amazon page was flooded with reviews that slammed the company for the additional filing charge, as well as a price jump to $59.95 from last year's $44.95 version.
Intuit has since dropped the filing charges, "responding to changing market conditions and customer feedback," according to a company press release. It's possible, at times, for the Web to seem like one seething, restless mass of "customer feedback," and so it's heartening to know that all that energy can occasionally be yoked and pointed in a manner like this. If it leads to fewer companies charging extortionate prices for formerly free services, it can hardly be a bad thing.
Android advances
Google's Android platform was more successful this week at getting people in its corner. Fourteen companies joined the Open Handset Alliance, the industry group supporting Google's Android mobile platform. The 48 members of the OHA are committed to the development of software and services that use or run on Google's Android mobile platform.
The new members include Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Toshiba, Asus and Garmin, the GPS specialists. Sony Ericsson has an Android phone in development for marketing in the middle of next year. One imagines the others won't be too far behind.
White House opposes handouts this week
The Bush administration reiterated its opposition to an FCC plan to require the winners of its upcoming bandwidth auction to reserve part of the spectrum for free wireless access service. The FCC's plan would force the winner to carve out a portion of the newly acquired bandwidth to provide an ad-supported free service, available to all. The service would be slower than today's standard broadband offerings, but faster than dial-up, and would include a content filter to block sites deemed inappropriate for kids.
Carriers are complaining that the rule would impede their ability to recoup their investment, and the site blocker has raised the eyebrows and voices of First Amendment watchdogs.
The Department of Commerce, in a letter to the FCC chairman, stated, "The administration believes that the [airwaves] should be auctioned without price or product mandate. The history of FCC spectrum auctions has shown that the potential for problems increases in instances where licensing is overly prescriptive or designed around unproven business models."
The point of the FCC plan is to broaden the coverage area of high-speed Internet. A significant number of Web surfers still use dial-up; the carriers wouldn't mind lowering that percentage, but they want to get paid for it.
