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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

#191

Post by Rapzid »

foobarian wrote: post #118
elicash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With about 70% of their revenue from the US Government in 2018? Those defense companies might as well be an extension of the government with the added "benefit" that it allows individuals to get wealthy off them.

Edit: Further to that and the comment pointing out where GPS was researched and developed, the Air Force still operates GPS block III and contracted these services out to Lockheed. So yeah, ultimately any success Lockheed has with GPS III is ultimately a success for the government..

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

#192

Post by commoner »

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…

eBay used to pay Google $20 million/year for ads with the "eBay" keyword. When they stopped, they noticed no impact on sales:

https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

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

#193

Post by [deleted] »

tgb wrote: post #143
stickfigure wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by komali2 »

young_unixer wrote: post #180
komali2 wrote: post #63

I'm not entirely clear why the answer is "regulate google" and not "the government builds and provides an internet search mechanism for its people." I.e., an actual utility from the start.

Because even they know the government is not competent enough to create a search service that people would want to use.

Are we sure? We have electric power across the whole country, the government found a way to get that done, even if it involved paying someone else to do it, it got done, and it got done pretty well.

We spent $24 billion on economic development for Afghanistan. What percentage of that would it take for the US government to build a good internet search engine?

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

#196

Post by kwhitefoot »

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…

> 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 dispute it with your own filing,

All of Scandinavia does this. Has been doing it for ages.

Most people need do nothing at all. And it works really well even if you do have to make some amendments (income in a foreign country for instance that the tax authorities can't see directly).

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

#197

Post by Isinlor »

wz1000 wrote: post #137
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.

Here's one idea: Make the index open and public, set up a public body to update it, and allow anyone to build a frontend. Access can be charged per query. Other companies/entities/governments will be allowed to mirror the index for essentially the price of data transfer. This is just something I thought up right now, and sure, there might be problems with the approach. But to pretend like there is absolutely nothing…

Governments can do that right now too. EU is trying to do that right now with Qwant.com where European Investment Bank invested €25 million.

So, I'm curious will you start using Qwant.com from now on?

https://www.qwant.com/

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

#198

Post by wz1000 »

jeffbee wrote: post #179
wz1000 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one idea: Make the index open and public, set up a public body to update it, and allow anyone to build a frontend. Access can be charged per query. Other companies/entities/governments will be allowed to mirror the index for essentially the price of data transfer. This is just something I thought up right now, and sure, there might be problems with the approach. But to pretend like there is absolutely nothing…

The way that people underestimate the scale and complexity of Google's indexing always makes me chuckle. I'm especially fond of the idea that other parties will just wantonly copy it, like for research purposes or something. Also I'm sorry to inform you that the way the index shards are produced, arranged in memory/on disk, and the manner in which they are queried and ranked are inextricably linked. You can't make a…

> The way that people underestimate the scale and complexity of Google's indexing always makes me chuckle.

The same approach that works for Google can also work for a public body supported by public funds. It can also use much of the same systems and maybe even personnel that Google currently employs for this purpose. I'm essentially asking for the search division of Google to be appropriated by the government.

> Also I'm sorry to inform you that the way the index shards are produced, arranged in memory/on disk, and the manner in which they are queried and ranked are inextricably linked. You can't make a search-neutral index format that can be queried economically.

I'm not asking for a search neutral index - public Google just needs to be (largely) open, transparent and accountable about its ranking algorithm. That's why the stipulation that other entities be allowed to mirror the index - they can optimize the index for their own purposes and rankings on their own hardware.

> I'm especially fond of the idea that other parties will just wantonly copy it, like for research purposes or something.

Not for research purposes - other entities will be free to copy it for purposes like sovereignty (governments), less/more censorship or to build their own systems on top of it for profit, or any other purpose.

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

#199

Post by marta_morena_25 »

jancsika wrote: post #175
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.

This is a beautiful implementation of a tactic to shift a conversation. OP starts with a seemingly related pivot to the topic of how to prioritize the regulation of a company like Google with the regulation of other companies. Such a conversation would obviously involve at least few points about why Google ought not top the list. (And hopefully many points given OP says Google is "by far" not top priority.) I was cer…

Anyway, there are bigger problems in the world than Google. While I am not sure payment processing is more urgent that regulating Google, there are many other things that are orders of magnitudes more important to tackle than regulating Google.

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

#200

Post by CobrastanJorji »

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?

The breakup of the AT&T / Bell System was in 1982. Let's look at what happened to the seven companies it was broken up into. Pacific Telesis was acquired by AT&T in 1997. Ameritech was acquired by AT&T in 1999. Southwestern Bell Corporation was acquired by AT&T in 2005. BellSouth was acquired by AT&T in 2006. The other 3 are now either part of Verizon or CenturyLink.

The breakup of Bell sent a message, but so did the reconsolidation of Bell.

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