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The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

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Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#61

Post by s3r3nity »

sjroot wrote: post #38
agentdrtran wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you don't like that, you can use a competitor." This ignores the tremendos cost to creating a search engine - DDG is the only one that has been able to even make a dent in Google's monopoly.

DDG, Yahoo, Bing, are all valid alternatives. Why does Google get screwed after the enormous investment they made (with time and money) to index pages on the internet?

> Why does Google get screwed after the enormous investment they made (with time and money) to index pages on the internet?

If that was _all_ they did for the past 20 years to get to where they are today, there wouldn't be any problem. The issue is when you leverage this market gain to punish competitors and expand into spaces at below cost (read: negative profits) to wipe out competitors and gain footholds. See examples regarding: Maps (Mapquest), reviews / answer boxes (Yelp), among others.

As a parallel example: Amazon reinvested profits to near 0 margins in their core business for years so that they could legally gain market share without resorting to anticompetitive behavior.* That's why you don't see similar breakup dialog against Amazon: they don't use this market dominance as leverage to own other markets in the same way Google has done. (Now, if they had done this for, say, boosting market share for AWS, then it _would_ be problematic.)

[*] There have been some examples pointed out regarding using third-party seller data in nefarious ways, but as of current evidence and testimony those examples have been so limited that the impact to market share are virtually nil to marginal at best.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#62

Post by jakeva »

t0mmyb0y wrote: post #27

Oh god. If google were regulated like a utility...we would be stuck with them instead of letting them go away by themselves. And yes, one day google will fail and bring a bunch of companies with them.

I've heard this before but I'm not convinced. Not every big company fails and goes away. Not every company is Yahoo.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#64

Post by tgb »

auganov wrote: post #48
ryanb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There needs to be guidelines for what Google can and can't do with search. Ex: Only 25% of the screen real estate can go to Google-owned ad products for allowing it to continue as a monopoly. 2. YouTube should possibly be broken out as a separate company and it shouldn't get favorable placement and treatment in search results 3. Businesses need to have more control over how their businesses appear when users searc…

> 1. There needs to be guidelines for what Google can and can't do with search. Again that's vague. And once there are such guidelines who enforces them? Will it be law applicable to all companies? Will there be a special govt office enforcing this? What kind of punishments? Fines? > 2. YouTube should possibly be broken out as a separate company and it shouldn't get favorable placement and treatment in search results…

Don't you think you're putting an unreasonably high burden on people? I can argue that I think the lawmakers representing me and other citizens need to figure out the details without myself having figured out the details. I can point out a problem and ask someone to fix the problem without know what the specifics of the solution look like. I know healthcare is absurdly complicated but I still think single-payer is the right idea and I want my law makers to do something about that - and if there's problems, it's on them to try to communicate that with me or to work around it. Same principle here. "Regulate Google as public utility" is actually fairly specific since we've got lots of public utilities already that we can model this off of.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#65

Post by cmrdporcupine »

shadowgovt wrote: post #51
tempsy wrote: post #18

I would argue Visa and Mastercard and payment processing at large as the top priority by far. It's crazy that we've given up control as a society of the only mechanisms for electronic payments in an increasingly cashless world to unregulated private entities who continue to jack up fees as often as they can get away with. Makes everything 3-5% more expensive. Ridiculous.

There is 100% nothing stopping the Federal government from offering a full-faith-and-credit-backed "America electronic transaction system" for electronic transactions, with those fees handled by taxes. But much as there's nothing stopping the Federal government from greatly simplifying the burden and toil of tax season by issuing 90% of Americans a pre-filled-out "This is what you owe; sign this and return it or disp…

FWIW the Canadian tax system is heading in this direction. With electronic filing programs most things get pre-filled now with data from Canada Revenue Agency based on the information they've received from your employer, your bank, your trading institutions, etc. Then it's more a matter of going through and verifying information and adding in any missing information (for example sale info from my stock units held in my employer's US brokerage) and looking any deductions that might apply (and the set of those is shrinking, which imho is a good thing)

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#66

Post by beders »

agentdrtran wrote: post #25
beders wrote: post #15

Google is a private corporation that runs various free services, i.e. you are the product. You agreed to their terms and services. If you don't like that, you can use a competitor. As long as there's an open internet infrastructure, there's no anti-competitive behavior. Everyone can be a google competitor of one of its services. Case in point, DuckDuckGo etc. If you want to regulate something, start with the ISPs and…

"If you don't like that, you can use a competitor." This ignores the tremendos cost to creating a search engine - DDG is the only one that has been able to even make a dent in Google's monopoly.

It's called capitalism.

It would be a monopoly if there's no way for a competitor to enter the market. But you are the market. It is your decision to go try a different search engine.

Following your argument, google would have never made it against AltaVista, Lycos...

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#67

Post by tempsy »

ISL wrote: post #59
tempsy wrote: post #18

I would argue Visa and Mastercard and payment processing at large as the top priority by far. It's crazy that we've given up control as a society of the only mechanisms for electronic payments in an increasingly cashless world to unregulated private entities who continue to jack up fees as often as they can get away with. Makes everything 3-5% more expensive. Ridiculous.

In the long run, overpaying for electronic transactions should only be the case if the major card-issuers collude. Otherwise, vendors should gravitate to those issuers that yield acceptable service at the lowest price and customers should gravitate toward those issuers that deliver them the greatest value. Rewards-point/miles schemes are moderately insane, but they allow the customer to express their preferences with…

it’s not - it wouldn’t be that expensive if interchange (biggest chunk of transaction processing) was more heavily regulated beyond the Durbin Amendment.

right now we have a situation where the rich (who pay for things with expensive premium credit cards) are being subsidized by the poor (using cash or basic credit cards)

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#68

Post by shadowgovt »

t0mmyb0y wrote: post #27

Oh god. If google were regulated like a utility...we would be stuck with them instead of letting them go away by themselves. And yes, one day google will fail and bring a bunch of companies with them.

Nothing ensconces a design---for good and for ill---like making it a utility.

There's a reason so much innovation in the power grid is of the hyper-local or off-the-grid form these days.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#69

Post by revnode »

satyrnein wrote: post #55
tempsy wrote: post #18

I would argue Visa and Mastercard and payment processing at large as the top priority by far. It's crazy that we've given up control as a society of the only mechanisms for electronic payments in an increasingly cashless world to unregulated private entities who continue to jack up fees as often as they can get away with. Makes everything 3-5% more expensive. Ridiculous.

I definitely have concerns about the stranglehold the payment processors have, but does it really make everything 3-5% more expensive? My understanding was that a good chunk of the 3% fee is given back to consumers as cash back or rewards, and that dealing with cash also had costs for businesses.

This is correct. The best you can usually do is 2% cash back, so really the consumer is being charged 1% for the convenience of using a credit card. Obviously most consider that worth it, which is why credit cards are so popular.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#70

Post by tgb »

MattGaiser wrote: post #39
auganov wrote: post #29

I love how few actual proposal there are out there as to what the government should actually do. That is - not just "regulate" or "break them up". I'm talking specifics. Once you start making concrete proposals it becomes increasingly obvious just how hard it is to come up with something that won't make everything worse.

Or all the impacts down the line. If they decided to basically seize Google, they would be telling investors that long term investment doesn’t work as the government will come along and ruin it. Watch as companies like Google rapidly stop any innovation spending and become high dividend stocks built only to pump out cash.

Hasn't this already happened with Bell and Bell Labs? Why didn't the breakup of Bell stop Google from investing in innovation?
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