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IT IS a measure of the speed of change these days that a company that, four years ago, was France's dreary old Compagnie Gnrale des Eaux is now in talks to buy a combine that owns the world's biggest music business and one of Hollywood's great movie studiosand nobody is the least bit surprised. Vivendi, which has transformed itself from a water-and-sewerage utility into a company with a reasonable claim to the title of Europe's biggest integrated media-and-communications company, and Seagram, a Canadian whisky firm that also owns Universal Studios, confirmed on June 14th that they were talking about a merger. The deal, if it happens, will look something like Europe's version of Time Warner-AOL.
Vivendi, like AOL, wants content. It is France's number two in both fixed-line and mobile telephony. It also has a joint venture with Vodafone AirTouch, the mobile-phone giant that bought Germany's Mannesmann earlier this year, to establish a "multi-access portal" to the Internet (through a mobile phone, a PC, a television or whatever), which will be rolled out across Europe. The portal is called Vizzavi. "Corrupt French, for once, not corrupt English," says a Vivendi executive. "Think of it as revenge." Vizzavi's first site, the French one, will be launched on June 19th...