The internet bundle is already here... and it's a bot

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[Commentary] Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook have defended net neutrality and fought the bundle. But, deep inside the software that powers their empires, they're each creating a different kind of bundle.

We might be winning (or at least aren't losing) the fight against the Comcasts and Time Warners of the world, but these tech giants could be quietly undercutting us as we blithely use their gadgets and software to do our internet things. The bundle is already here, it came from places we haven't been watching closely enough, and it has many names. There's more than enough doomsaying about the issues related to Instant Articles, Internet.org, and Binge On. Instead, I'd like to take a minute to doomsay what could become the other opponents to the kind of free, transparent, and open internet we all want: Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Facebook M, and Google Now. These intelligent assistants are great. I use them every day and expect I will continue to use them for, well, ever. But there's a problem that's built into them: they only seem to work with certain parts of the web and — here's the real rub — certain apps.


The internet bundle is already here... and it's a bot