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Merger, merger everywhere. Where it stops? We should care?

This is an update to this April post:

Even though there were some major concerns by the US Congress about safeguards for classified work that Lucent’s Bell Laboratories conducts for the US government, President Bush approved the merger of Lucent, a US company and Alcatel, a French company. The companies have promised to create a separate unit run by Americans to handle sensitive US contracts.

The White House through a spokesperson says; “Alcatel and Lucent have agreed with US government agencies to enter into two robust and far-reaching agreements designed to ensure the protection of our national security.”

Will this blow up in the face of the President like his approval of the proposed sales of Port administration to Arab interests? Or will it die a quiet wimper. Only time will tell.

Original Post from April:
Over the weekend it was announced that the French Company Alcatel has finalized plans to merge with Lucent Technologies.

This taken from the Lucent web site: http://www.lucent.com/corpinfo/
Lucent Technologies designs and delivers the systems, services and software that drive next-generation communications networks. Backed by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent uses its strengths in mobility, optical, software, data and voice networking technologies, as well as services, to create new revenue-generating opportunities for its customers, while enabling them to quickly deploy and better manage their networks. Lucent’s customer base includes communications service providers, governments and enterprises worldwide.

Lucent was part of the old ATT and spun off the portion of the company that was then known as Bell Labs. Over the years Bell Labs have developed;
Data Networking
The Transistor
Cellular Telephone Technology
Solar Cells
Laser
Digital Transmission and Switching
Communications Satellites
Touch-Tone Telephone
Unix Operating System and C Language
Digital Signal Processor (DSP)

Since the company does sensitive work for U.S. military and intelligence interests they plan to create a subsidiary to preside over Lucent’s Bell Labs.

While I may have a problems with the ideas that corporations are just getting bigger and it’s getting hard for a small business survive, my biggest problem is that the US is losing one of it’s greatest technology company. The US who once was a world leader is becoming the joke of the world when it comes to producing and inventing fine products.

Think about where we will be in 25 years and right now in my mind I don’t like it. Someday all of our business will be through one company. For now I hope it’s WalMart, and they remain a US company.

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