PBS | I, Cringely . December 1, 2005 - The Sweet Spot

PBS | I, Cringely . December 1, 2005 - The Sweet Spot "Microsoft is effectively taping $126 to every xBox 360 as it leaves the factory. Say Google did something similar with the imbedded, unhackable, valueless for anything else gSpot, driving its cost down to $10 (it has to cost something or some people won't plug it in) from a Cost of Goods of, say, $40. By investing $1 billion, Google could put 33 million gSpots into local service, networking at least five million homes for two percent of the amount per customer Verizon and SBC are throwing into Fiber-to-the-Home.
Who is going to win the triple play? It doesn't matter. Who is going to win the game? Any player with deep pockets and no particular technological dependency. At this point that could be Yahoo or Microsoft or AOL or some new player altogether, but it probably means Google."