Could someone explain this scenario about Google's involvement in the wireless spectrum auction?
"If history is any guide, Page’s idealistic impulses could result in a vaster, more sprawling company. The following is an example of one of Page’s idealistic impulses (wanting people to share spectrum) which could result in a vaster, more sprawling company (if they hadn't been outbid, Google would have expanded by buying a business asset i.e. spectrum which they didn't need). I've no experience with bidding. I don't understand what's happening at all An 'auction' is a way to sell something. Instead of offering it for sale at a fixed price, you offer it 'to the highest bidder'. Someone (e.g. Google) says, ""I'll offer you [some amount: e.g. a million dollars] for it."" If no-one else exceeds that bid, then you say 'sold' and Google has bought it. Alternatively someone else comes along with a higher bid, ""I'll offer you two million dollars for it,"" in which case they're the new high bidder, and you'll sell it to them unless the process repeats itself with anyone counter-offering an even higher bid. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction The ""Disadvantages"" section of this article alleges (currently without a citation) that: Despite the apparent success of spectrum auctions, an important disadvantage limiting both efficiency and revenues is demand reduction and collusive bidding. The information and flexibility in the process of auction can be used to reduce auction prices by tacit collusion. When bidder competition is weak and one bidder holds an apparent advantage to win the auction for specific licenses, other bidders will often choose not to the bid for higher prices, hence reducing the final revenue generated by the auction.[citation needed] In this case, the auction is best thought of as a negotiation among the bidders, who agree on who should win the auction for each discrete bit of spectrum. Google's bid made that impossible (or, at least, ensured that the winning bid would be at least as high as the minimum which was set by Google's bid)." At the time of the auction android was just vaporware but many companies were restricting the phones that they allowed on their networks so that they could control what the phones were being used for.  The big guys (AT&T, Verison, and Sprint) feared that being forced to allow phones that could do things they did not have control over would cost them money(Especially since they charged for every little feature they added). They also wanted to prevent their phones (which they subsidize to their customers in to reap long term profits) from being taken to other networks.   Goggle saw the potential for the largest chunk of bandwidth available to the telco's to be restricted to services of one company and their strangle hold over the phones and services that were allowed to use it.  They manuvered the bidding to ensure that this did not happen.  There are many who believe that Verison bought the spectrum more to prevent anyone from competeing with them than because they actually wanted to use it.  But at least they are forced to allow other parties in to compete even if it is on their playground.
Your first scenario, involving shareholders in a private corp being limited by a contractual agreement, is common in practice. Frequent clauses include methods of valuing the shares if someone wants to sell, first right of refusal [you have to attempt to sell to the other shareholders, before you can sell to a 3rd party], and many others. These clauses are governed by contract law [ie: some clauses may be illegal in contract law, and therefore couldn't be applied here]. A Universal Shareholders' Agreement is just the same as the above, but applied to more people. You would never get an already public company to convert to a universal shareholders' agreement - because even 1 share voting 'no' would block it [due to corporate law limiting the power of a corporation from abusing minority shareholder value]. In practice, these agreements universally exist at the start of incorporation, or at least at the first moment shares become available. An example is the Canadian mega-construction company PCL*, which is employee-owned. When the original owner transferred the corporation to his employees, there was a USA in place which still today governs how the corporation operates.  In theory you could have a 'public company' where most shares are already owned by the founders, and 100% of remaining shares are owned by a specific group of individuals, in which case you may be able to get a USA signed. But it wouldn't really happen in practice.  *[Note that while PCL is broadly owned by a large group of employees, it is not a 'public company' because any random schmuck can't simply buy a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange. I assume most exchanges would prevent corporations from being listed if they had ownership restrictions like this]. Spectrum-wise, Sprint is actually in the best position of all four major carriers. They have enough nationwide 800 MHz spectrum for good voice and LTE coverage and penetration, and they have enough 2.5 GHz spectrum to outdo every other carrier in capacity. They are the one carrier that really doesn't need any more spectrum right now.  The argument about tower count is largely irrelevant with today's mobile data demand. You will find that Verizon and AT&amp;T have built out at least as densely (and usually much moreso) as Sprint and T-Mobile, even with having 10-20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum each, precisely because of capacity demands. All four major carriers are rolling out microwave spectrum for capacity (AWS and PCS for Verizon, AT&amp;T, and T-Mobile, and BRS/EBS for Sprint), and dense site placement is going to be a necessity.  The argument about accuracy is also ridiculous considering the performance at the edge-of-cell and in the sector nulls; you're going to need multiple sites regardless if you want acceptable coverage for everyone.  The company hurting the most spectrum-wise is T-Mobile since they only own a few 700 MHz licenses and can't even use them in most places until after the FCC incentive auction next year. AT&amp;T could use a little more microwave, but they do have 20 MHz of WCS nationwide that they're about to start deploying.  EDIT: More info:  http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/how-much-lte-spectrum-do-verizon-att-sprint-and-t-mobile-have-and-where  Those charts do omit the 10x10 WCS AT&amp;T will be deploying, as well as the PCS that Verizon, AT&amp;T, and T-Mobile have/will refarm. Thanks!   &gt; How do you believe it should be approached?   Businesses should be more cognizant of the fact that they have enormous amounts of technical debt, or what will be considered to be debt, that will suddenly need to be solved.  Infrastructure or applications that haven't seen a dime in 5+ years. Shadow IT that was stood up (e.g. hey we use this access database that everyone completely forgot about to meet this one specific need) and has somehow managed to survive. That's one of the most frequent issues that will grind consolidations to a halt. The business need to involve IT as early as possible in the M&amp;A process.  Cross-platform can usually be solved by some form of extraction, translaton, load processes. That's straightforward but it does take time.  If you're a company that cares enough to have a disaster recovery team you should also have an IT M&amp;A team that meets regularly to have a dry-run of an M&amp;A that covers the processes from end to end for 2-3 worst-case-scenarios. New scenarios should be identified. If you do enough M&amp;As you'll have compiled a fairly decent playbook of scenarios after the third or fourth. You'll have a well oiled machine that your investors can and should be proud of.   For perspective the best M&amp;A team I've seen was Microsoft's and even then shit regularly hits the fan for those guys when it comes to technical debt. That's something to keep in mind. "No, because:  (a) People shift industries as wages adjust  (b) people increase their standard of living  Let's take (a).  As stockbreaker points out, most people in the United States were involved with agriculture at, say, 1800 (I dunno about 1900, but that's possible).  Yes, as we mechanized agriculture, we eliminated need for farm workers.  Simultaneously, as a factory worker could produce more *stuff*, the wage ratio became more-and-more favorable to move into factories.  As a result, we saw massive urbanization; instead of people living in the country, they moved to the city and worked in other types of jobs.  In 1700, in, say, England, less than half of the *men* were even literate.  Today, we spend over a decade simply educating people.  Then let's look at (b).  Let's say that you have some company with a couple of software engineers and a couple of business guys that makes huge amounts of money.  Google or something.  What are they going to *do* with that money?  Okay, maybe they don't pull a Bill Gates and just give it away, but seriously, what do they do?  Well, one thing they could do is to just live the life they would have anyway and refuse to spend any more money.  That's possible, but unlikely; people usually want to work for the things that money can buy, not just money.  So they go out and get a Rolex watch (which sends wealth to watch manufacture and marketing people) or a yacht (which sends wealth to boat builders).  Both are very pricey items relative to the benefit someone gets, but there's a degree of diminishing returns.  The money flows on back.  People have been concerned that we'd ""run out of work"" for a long time, as technology improves productivity.  They've proposed that we'd have to have an eight hour work week because there simply wouldn't be demand for the extra labor.  And if we maintained the kind of standard-of-living that people had a few centuries back, then maybe we would have that eight hour work week.  But historically, we've always simply found new things that cost more that soak up more money." I don't know that any other company will ever have as much free cash as Google or Apple, so it's kind of hard to say it's easily repeatable. Without so much cash, would another firm be able to do as much? That's what I'd like to know. It was a tough call.   Here's what I think happened...  They needed to use that 2.5 Ghz spectrum for something or risk losing it (FCC mandates on the purchase of that spectrum). LTE was nowhere near ready for deployment, so they had to go with WiMax. It was a good technology, ready to go at the right time, and far cheaper to deploy than LTE but the spectrum wasn't ideal for all environments. They always planned on switching from WiMax to LTE at some point.  Unfortunately, the infighting with Clearwire delayed the rollout. WiMax didn't come to market soon enough and not enough people bought into it. Sprint saw this outcome as a possibility which is why the spun off their WiMax assets into Clearwire instead of proceeding with their original Xohm service. They wanted to insulate Sprint which also meant that Clearwire could become a toxic asset. Clearwire probably wasn't very happy with that part of the plan. Cue infighting and rollout delay.  Since WiMax launched over a year late and the competition jumped forward, the WiMax rollout was cut short. Verizon pushed up their LTE rollout far earlier than planned (which caused constant Verizon data network outages last year). AT&amp;T secured dominance with the iPhone and their GSM network allowed them to have higher data speeds, so they weren't worried about speeding up their LTE rollout. T-mo's parent company wanted out of the US market but still had high speed GSM and low prices. Sprint had to move forward with LTE or eat everyone else's dust.   That's why you never got it.  To top that off, they had to reband their 800 mhz spectrum, which meant killing the ability for them to use it for a few years. They also needed to completely rebuild their public image (which was shit thanks to Hesse's predecessor, Gary Forsee and his crew... all of which got shit-canned when Hesse took charge). They also had to deal with a few somewhat bad calls like the Nextel purchase (orchestrated by Forsee and his crew). The good news is that they snagged that 800 mhz spectrum from the Nextel deal which was fairly important.  Here's the good news. Sprint's network overhaul is going to be awesome.  The 2.5 Ghz spectrum is excellent for data speeds and high traffic. Densely populated areas will see some AMAZING speeds. Where the 2.5 Ghz spectrum falls off, the 1900 mhz will pick up. Where 1900 mhz falls off, the 800 mhz will pick up. Everything will deliver a nice, smooth, and fast experience. You'll start enjoying these improvements within 6 months.  I'm pretty hopeful that Softbank will bring back removable SIMs and worldphones for interop between the US and Japanese networks. "I was actually kinda surprised--especially given WSJ's demographic--that this was considered newsworthy to them. I mean, *of course* Orbitz would do this, or something analogous to this. Is there an expectation that companies should offer ""deaf and dumb"" services irrespective of their demographic? Browsers being one of the few data metrics that are easily mined by web properties, I would think this sort of thing is _everywhere_.  Now that that's out of the way... OK, so what's your favorite travel site for cheap booking (on Chrome)? :P" Typical BI story.  No original content- just commenting on an actual piece of journalism which they found elsewhere on the internet.  In short- it's blogspam.  [Here's the original ZDNet article](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/firefox-faces-uncertain-future-as-google-deal-apparently-ends/4241) they're using as the sole basis for their article.