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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

#81

Post by tempsy »

dogma1138 wrote: post #56
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.

Payment processors and providers are regulated around the world and in the US, if the US wanted too they could cap fees they already do to some extent just not as much as say Europe.

every industry is regulated to a certain degree. making something a utility is a step change difference.

interchange in the US is not regulated outside the Durbin Amendment for debit interchange for large banks.

Visa and MC are way too lightly regulated when they are the gate keepers to a cashless world due to what I would consider a historical accident. No reason why these networks shouldn’t be utilities in a cashless world.

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

#82

Post by shadowgovt »

Aunche wrote: post #22

Both conservatives and liberals are convinced that Google is rigged against them. I don’t trust American lawmakers not to shove their ideologies into a search engine.

If anything, perhaps agreement from these two segments of government indicates that Google is serving public interest as a viable counterweight to the force of government itself?

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

#83

Post by s3r3nity »

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…

> As long as there's an open internet infrastructure, there's no anti-competitive behavior.

While I _really_ want to agree with you here, in all due respect this is a naive view on antitrust theory.

Elasticity of demand - the ease at which you as a consumer can switch to competitive offerings if price were to suddenly skyrocket - is only one factor of the calculus regarding whether or not Google is anti-competitive.

You also need to look at the elasticity of supply: in this example, is it easy to enter the search market? You can learn to make a SERP or an algorithm for indexing / ranking results in an algorithms 101 class...but let's not pretend there's not a SIGNIFICANT investment needed in indexing BILLIONS of pages of documents just to be a viable competitor. This is not free by any means, and requires $millions (dozens? hundreds?) of upfront capital just to maybe get a few % points market share.

In historical experience, part of the disconnect with the latter piece when discussing this with other tech people is that the easy answer is "oh you can compete with Google: you just need a better algorithm." Of which I'm not sure I can fully agree / disagree - but I _would_ press on the fact that the machine learning scale required would still be a significant upfront investment that makes market entry have steep odds.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

tempsy wrote: post #74
revnode wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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) because interchange is much higher for the top of line credit cards.

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by auganov »

tgb wrote: post #64
auganov wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

I haven't searched exhaustively, but nonetheless you'd think there would be more specific proposals being talked about given how hot this topic is.

There is very little precedent to regulating tech companies on such a granular level. The closest thing I can think of is various EU regulations that usually amount to shaking down US giants for money once in a while. It's hard to compare this to regulating something like electricity or water delivery which is much more stable technologically. Google has changed tremendously over the years and still is innovating rapidly.

And as to healthcare, well, I do think people should actually go through the same thought exercise. Tons of totally broken overregulated healthcare systems out there. "Lawmakers" usually effectively ends up being a combination of lobbyists, politicians and public pressure.

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

#86

Post by shadowgovt »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #65
shadowgovt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is a good thing. Private tax accountants are a huge political lobby in the US, so it's a non-starter here.

The US barely got off the ground a free option for public e-filing, and we managed to botch it up by handing it to a private company to implement, which promptly turned around and made it absolutely as impossible to access as they were allowed to by law.

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

#87

Post by shakna »

sjroot wrote: post #33
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…

Bingo. Every device that I can think of allows you to choose a default search engine. It would be very easy for me to use something other than Google; they have no anticompetitive hold on how I explore the Internet and discover new services. This article is written by someone who would personally profit from Google’s regulation. It’s an ad for his company disguised as virtue signaling.

> Every device that I can think of allows you to choose a default search engine.

Users, overwhelming, do not change defaults. Period. Unless there is a step where they are shown a range of options and select one, this is not an active choice for them.

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

#88

Post by samaxe »

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.

> It's crazy that we've given up control as a society of the only mechanisms for electronic payments

It’s no the ONLY mechanism. Crypto currencies solve this issue.

It’s the only mechanism for fiat currency.

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

#89

Post by patmorgan23 »

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.

ACH and Wire transfers exist. Also the Fed is developing a new instant payments system that will be launched in a few years.

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

#90

Post by machello13 »

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…

It's extremely naive to think that only Republicans are responsible for that.
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