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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

#141

Post by kebman »

machello13 wrote: post #90
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…

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

The Democratic Party is a long-standing "bankers party" and "corporatists party" (a party for big companies and organizations). In that sense, they're just as "bad" as the Republican Party, and due to how the whole democratic system is set up in the USA, Americans are in reality bereft of alternatives. Picking anyone else than those two, is effectively a blank vote. This system can at least in part explain why so many Americans choose to stay at home during the elections, because to them, for whatever reason, it doesn't really make much of a difference who is in power.

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

#142

Post by CPLX »

auganov wrote: post #121
CPLX wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposal of what to do is for the Justice Department to sue them for antitrust violations and for the courts to break up the divisions of the company that engage in unlawful anticompetitive behavior. Not only is it plausible we saw it done with Microsoft, and the result was an explosion of entrepreneurship and innovation in the relevant markets, which were software and internet services.

No, Microsoft was never broken up. That was the initial judgment. The case ended in a settlement [0] which didn't require all that much from Microsoft. The obligations have now long expired. [0] https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/file/503541/downlo...

That’s correct, they settled before any divestiture was forced on them, and I assume Google might too.

But the threat stopped them from dominating the browser market and enabled the first dot-com explosion.

We would be way better off today if there was a powerful countervailing force to all this FAANG consolidation. The current environment is deeply harmful to innovation.

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

#143

Post by tgb »

stickfigure wrote: post #119
tgb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You've misread me if you thought I said specifics aren't important. Rather, that it's possible to advocate for "someone needs to figure out the specifics" without yourself knowing the specifics.

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

#144

Post by jeffbee »

swalsh wrote: post #98

I really wish google had public data for something like average page number or something similar for a search term. We have data for what people are searching for, but its hard to determine how successful people are in finding what they're looking for. If you're searching for a niche, it would be great to know what people want but can't find. I suspect google already has this data, but it's too valuable for them to s…

SEO industry publications suggest that fewer than 1% of all clicks come from page 2 or higher.

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

#145

Post by 12xo »

shadowgovt wrote: post #57
12xo wrote: post #50

On top of search, one of the real issues is that they set their ad prices with no market forces at play. $50 per click? Why yes, but only because they say so... Fake click? We say its real, pay us...

There are several other competing ad networks, as well as traditional advertising models. Nobody actually has to play Google's ad game; companies continue to crunch the numbers and decide it works out best for them in terms of dollar-per-value-add.

No there is not. There is no competition for Google ad words, just like there is no competition for Facebook. They set the market prices, the middle-men add to that cost and sell their services based on value add...

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

#148

Post by tempsy »

elliekelly wrote: post #130
tempsy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes i know that. are we going to back to the days where I pay for my groceries by writing a check? you can’t possibly be arguing that ACH and wire transfers make sense for everyday purchases.

Why wouldn’t ACH make sense for everyday purchases?

are you asking me why it doesn’t make sense to write a check for every small purchase you make?

if the Fed’s faster payment network goes live and makes ACH instantaneous can payments can be done with a QR code or something similar then that is viable but not right now.

beyond that, almost no e-commerce store accepts ACH. It also doesn’t benefit the consumer to bother with the hassle of ACH vs card when there’s no discount...you’re just saving the merchant money. Amazon is the only one I can think of.

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

#149

Post by xapata »

hinkley wrote: post #125
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…

I don’t recall which, but I searched for a brand name recently and their web site was number five or six. Pinterest was higher, which drives me nuts.

Pinterest might be bidding very high for that phrase, or maybe other consumers prefer Pinterest to the manufacturer's site.

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

#150

Post by Const-me »

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…

> You agreed to their terms and services.

Search engine web interface doesn't require users to accept anything. Search crawler indexes the web without any contractual relations with web site owners.

> you can use a competitor

As a search engine user, I can and I do.

However, the party most affected by the monopoly is web site owners. They can't do that.

> start with the ISPs and restore net neutrality

Where I live, I have a choice of 2 wired broadband ISPs, 3 wireless with comparable speeds (30-40 mbit/sec in practice). To my knowledge, none of them filters or prioritizes traffic. I generally support net neutrality but I'm not affected my the lack of these laws. This is unlike search engine monopoly: despite I don't personally use google search, most other people do.

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