Comcast is afraid that the company isn't big enough to fight against Google

Apr 9, 2014 14:33 GMT  ·  By

The Comcast and Time Warner Cable merger hasn’t yet been approved, but Comcast says that this is the only way to compete against the likes of Google.

The company filed a lengthy public interest statement with the Federal Communications Commission (FTC), trying to explain the reasoning behind its $45.2 billion purchase offer for TWC and why this will be good for consumers.

However, critics are afraid that allowing a merger between the two largest cable providers in the United States will only lower competition. Some 50 public interest groups have sent a letter to Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC, saying that a takeover of this size will have unthinkable consequences and have urged the agency to block the deal.

Similar letters have been sent to the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Justice.

On the other hand, Comcast seems to believe that it will convince the FTC by saying that it needs the merger in order to compete against Google, Netflix and other players in the broadband market. This seems to be a preemptive move since Google is currently only offering speedy Internet connections in a few markets at this point.

However, the Internet giant has managed to scare the ISPs a bit since it offers much speedier connections for a lot less money than some packages that are currently on the market. This has pushed players such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable to lower prices as well.

That being said, David Cohen, Comcast executive vice president, ominously said that “Google is coming.” Basically, they’re scared of the fact that Google is a global company that has enormous resources.

Cohen has also expressed concern regarding the likes of Netflix, Dish, AT&T, Verizon, Apple, and Sony, even though most of these don’t even provide Internet connections.

It’s also interesting to see Netflix on Comcast’s list of competitors, considering that the ISP basically bullied Netflix into paying top dollars to get access to higher Internet speeds. This happened after months of fiddling with connection speeds until users couldn’t stop complaining about the lousy service they were receiving.

In a rather public bashing, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings asked the FTC to implement net neutrality rules that would prohibit the likes of Comcast from extracting a toll just because they could since they had the ability to control access to millions of consumers.

The deal between Comcast and Time Warner Cable is supposed to be analyzed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.