In a move that proves the tech industry has finally run out of things to buy and words to describe them, Accenture has dropped $1.2 billion on Ookla, the parent company of Speedtest and Downdetector. Yes, you read that correctly. A consulting firm—best known for charging five-figure sums to produce 100-slide PowerPoint decks that conclude “you should innovate”—is paying over a billion dollars for the digital equivalent of a “Check Engine” light.

The centerpiece of this corporate wedding is the claim by Accenture CEO Julie Sweet that this acquisition will help clients “scale AI safely.” It’s a remarkable sentence because it manages to use three buzzwords while saying absolutely nothing of substance. Let’s look at the logic: how does a website that tells me Comcast is having a stroke in Philadelphia help a government agency “scale AI safely”? Are we worried the AI will become sentient only to find out its upload speed is too slow to take over the world? Unless “AI safety” now means “making sure the chatbot doesn’t lag while it hallucinates,” this synergy is about as natural as orange juice and toothpaste.

Accenture is betting that the “proprietary data” from millions of frustrated gamers and remote workers clicking a “Go” button is the missing ingredient for global AI dominance. In reality, the data they’re buying is largely composed of people discovering that their router is behind a couch or that Netflix is down for everyone, not just them. It turns out that $1.2 billion buys you a very expensive map of where the internet currently smells like burning rubber.

The irony of a massive B2B consulting behemoth swallowing up consumer-facing tools like Downdetector cannot be overstated. Downdetector thrives on grassroots, real-time reporting from the “is it just me?” crowd. Now, those reports are being fed into the Accenture machine to help “business and government.” It’s a charming evolution: you report a YouTube outage because you’re bored at work, and ten months later, a consultant in a slim-fit suit presents a “Digital Connectivity Optimization Strategy” back to your boss for three times your annual salary.

Furthermore, let’s talk about Ziff Davis’s role as the ultimate thrift store flipper. They’ve owned Ookla since 2014, and by offloading it now, they’ve managed to convince Accenture that a speed test site is actually an “AI enablement platform.” It is the greatest trick since someone convinced the world that a Juicero was a necessary kitchen appliance.

For the average user, your favorite way to confirm that your ISP is lying to you is now owned by a company that specializes in “transformational change.” Expect the “Go” button to be replaced by a “Request a Consultation” form, and your ping results to be delivered via a PDF summary with a bill for 40 billable hours. If this is what it takes to “scale AI safely,” we might be better off sticking to dial-up and a sturdy abacus. At least the abacus doesn’t need a billion-dollar data set to tell you it’s working.