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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

#111

Post by ipnon »

tgb wrote: post #70
MattGaiser wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Bell broke up in 1982. The current startup wave that began in the 90s has not seen an antitrust case of that magnitude, even Microsoft's.

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

#112

Post by splintercell »

ryanb wrote: post #36
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.

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…

With that 25% of the screen real estate regulation now Google has an incentive to break its search results down on multiple pages.

Search results would be available for navigation in a card UI (one screen per result) where 25% of the screens real estate being devoted to Google on a products would get them a lot more impressions.

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

#113

Post by shadowgovt »

elicash wrote: post #106
chrisco255 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the same government that couldn't get a healthcare website going is supposed to also power every single transaction from internal infrastructure. There are hidden costs that are much higher than 3% to giving the government full control over every transaction in society. It's a single point of failure with no redundancy or decentralization, a large attack vector, and a human rights nightmare. As a general rule,…

I mean, government does GPS. Sends folks to space. You mention SpaceX, but let's not pretend NASA doesn't exist. Yeah, there was once that website that had a bad launch, but there's nothing inherent in government that wouldn't allow this to work well. I do think ideally this could be done by NY or CA first. We should test out ideas in the states, where possible.

SpaceX successfully built a capsule to get people into space.

They built it to the specifications that NASA enforced upon them, which were paid for in blood.

And you don't have to look far in the SpaceX organization to see what risks the company is willing to take if an external authority isn't imposing regulation on them.

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

#114

Post by Kalium »

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…

> Don't you think you're putting an unreasonably high burden on people?

In a world where the question of "Should we attempt to do a thing?" depends in part on whether or not there's a way to do it that brings more help than harm, I think it might be worth considering that these could be seen as reasonable questions.

Given that regulated utilities have occasionally produced massive messes like California's ongoing issues with PG&E and wildfires, do you think it's worth being cautious and considering possible consequences?

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

#115

Post by ryanmarsh »

chrisco255 wrote: post #95
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…

Right, the same government that couldn't get a healthcare website going is supposed to also power every single transaction from internal infrastructure. There are hidden costs that are much higher than 3% to giving the government full control over every transaction in society. It's a single point of failure with no redundancy or decentralization, a large attack vector, and a human rights nightmare. As a general rule,…

The Federal gov't is vast and is not uniformly ineffective. Even within departments tech performance can vary greatly.

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

#116

Post by Ericson2314 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #11

One Google quirk I've been thinking about lately is the times when you search for something and the thing you want is the top advertised and organic result. Seems like a waste of money. An example, if you search for "heroku" then you get an ad for heroku, which, yeah, is what I was searching for, but heroku is also the top result and obviously what I was looking for. Heroku is paying Google to provide Google with the…

You give them a choice between divesting all their various businesses, or the FCC dictates how the business is run. The latter will be boring stuff like % of search results that are ads, etc., rules for auditing algorithms, etc.

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

#117

Post by dntrkv »

s3r3nity wrote: post #61
sjroot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exam…

Google Maps beat Mapquest because it was so much better.

You could say Apple engages in a similar anti-competitive tactic by preloading all iPhones with Apple Maps. Yet, Google Maps is still used far more by iOS users than Apple Maps even though they have to manually download it. Why? Because it is a much better product.

I'm not saying the big tech companies don't use their position in the market to promote their products, they obviously do, but whether or not this constitutes as anti-competitive behavior, I don't think it does.

Now if Apple or Google were to prevent users from installing Google Maps, or crippling it for the sole purpose of degrading its user experience, then that would be anti-competitive behavior in my eyes. Sure, there have been disputes between Apple and app makers, but when you dig into the details of these stories, it isn't as cut and dry as some lead you to believe.

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

#118

Post by foobarian »

elicash wrote: post #106
chrisco255 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the same government that couldn't get a healthcare website going is supposed to also power every single transaction from internal infrastructure. There are hidden costs that are much higher than 3% to giving the government full control over every transaction in society. It's a single point of failure with no redundancy or decentralization, a large attack vector, and a human rights nightmare. As a general rule,…

I mean, government does GPS. Sends folks to space. You mention SpaceX, but let's not pretend NASA doesn't exist. Yeah, there was once that website that had a bad launch, but there's nothing inherent in government that wouldn't allow this to work well. I do think ideally this could be done by NY or CA first. We should test out ideas in the states, where possible.

Ah, yes, this government right: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/gps.html

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

#119

Post by stickfigure »

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…

Where I live, the largest public utility is being sanctioned for criminal manslaughter and burning down large portions of the state.

So I think the specifics are rather important.

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

#120

Post by hinkley »

Earlier this week when we were talking about FOSS search engines, I thought:

How weird would it be if the Internet Archive expanded its mandate to include search? No that’s dumb. Is it? I don’t know.

It might be good if search were regulated as a utility. And ad free. I don’t know if regulating Google is the way to do it.

The problem is if the government gets too friendly with search then they’ll want the data and holy shit will that be a dark day.

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