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Mark Cuban Claims the Internet Is Dead

‘Billionaire tries to outdo Michael Bay by delivering fiery speech against what he sees as dying online world.’ -

Famed internet-made billionaire and blogger Mark Cuban raised quite a stir this week when he announced dramatically, “The Internet’s dead. It’s over.” The comments made by Cuban at the CTAM summit will likely strike many as eerily similar to Michael Bay’s HD DVD trashing rants.

Cuban became a billionaire when he sold Broadcast.com, originally Audionet, to Yahoo for $5.7B. Cuban built Broadcast.com into an online powerhouse after co-founding it with earnings from the sale of his company MicroSolutions in the 80s, an early reseller of Lotus Notes. Broadcast.com at its peak featured 420 radio stations and networks; 56 TV stations and cable networks; and live game coverage of over 450 college and professional teams.

He used his wealth to buy the Dallas Mavericks and while a blogger himself, has recently taken a rather scornful attitude to the internet, which made him wealthy. He recently created a stir when he became the first team owner to ban bloggers from an NBA locker room.

At the CTAM conference, Cuban’s new anti-internet sentiment became vitriolic. He addressed the panel which consisted of cable systems providers stating, “The Internet’s for old people.”

Cuban claims the internet has stagnated and that the only new invention on the internet was YouTube. Cuban, however, went to argue that YouTube is nothing more than a sham based on copyright infringement and represents little real creativity. Cuban feels that cable and satellite networks have overtaken the internet in providing complex interactive services. Cuban says he once thought the internet would be superior for providing such services, but remarks, “I was wrong.”

He points to the openness of collections of cable networks versus networks built by telephone companies like Verizon, which are stymied by problems talking to each other. Cuban envisions cable services offering users suites of office applications or other complex utilities, something he says would allow them to leverage their superiority to “outgoogle” Google.

While Cuban believes strongly that cable intranets are superior to internet, most experts think his claims are very off base. They state that his proposed cable systems applications sound remarkably similar to the cable television network flop @Home, which attempted to market a higher-speed “private” internet, that was separate from the normal internet.

While Cuban is known for a flare for histrionics and outbursts, his collected, deliberate speech about his animosity for the internet is sure to stir up a great deal of controversy.

© 2008, DailyTech

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