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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

#261

Post by pydry »

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…

Are you arguing that it's somehow impossible or technically unreasonable for a startup search engine to piggyback off google's search index in a similar way to how duckduckgo piggybacks off bing's search index?

And that the very idea that this could be made possible through law makes you chuckle?

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

#262

Post by cmehdy »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #258

When a country regulates Google, they raise borders. Google, like any other global internet compnay, is across borders. I would hate to be blocked form accessing US Google when I live in Canada. Putting up barriers on the Internet is contrary to an open Web. It does exist for content. For example Netflix content in Canada is different than in the US. You just can't do that for web pages. In addition, nothing prevents…

I must be misunderstanding your example, because as a francophone living in Canada, google still shoves English-Canadian and French-Quebecois results + articles + maps my way when I search for information on Google.FR.. so I fail to see how Google isn't already doing exactly what you would hate to see them do.

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

#263

Post by badRNG »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #258

When a country regulates Google, they raise borders. Google, like any other global internet compnay, is across borders. I would hate to be blocked form accessing US Google when I live in Canada. Putting up barriers on the Internet is contrary to an open Web. It does exist for content. For example Netflix content in Canada is different than in the US. You just can't do that for web pages. In addition, nothing prevents…

> What do you do when FAANGs become larger than some countries?

This seems to be a bigger issue than tech companies. The tendency towards monopoly is a problem that every industry faces, where many international trusts hold more power than many of the governments in the countries they do business in. Worse, in some cases these trusts can exert undue influence over these governments. It isn't unreasonable that at some point in the future they could have similar power over even the US.

How exactly to deal with these power imbalances between countries and international businesses seems largely to be uncharted territory.

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

#264

Post by pmoriarty »

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 in an increasingly cashless world to unregulated private entities who continue to jack up fees as often as they can get away with."

Regarding such jacking up of fees, it seems that nearly every month PG&E, a regulated utility company in California, sends notices of price hikes.

I'm not sure how they manage to get away with this, but it makes me skeptical that merely regulating a company, or even nationalizing it, will be sufficient to keep rates low, since regulatory capture will continue to be a possibility.

Further, its an open secret that the very politicians who are tasked with regulating industry are often former (or future) executives in the very companies they regulate. Political office is a revolving door for industry executives, which regularly land well paid jobs in those same industries after retiring from politics.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem, but we need to look at it squarely in the face and not labor under the illusion that government and corporations are clearly separate nor diametrically opposed entities.

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

#265

Post by temporalparts »

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 think having competing ads make sense because it shows consumers alternatives which is competition. Google does add a relevance factor to the cost which means Heroku would have to pay a lot less for the spot than its competitors.

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

#266

Post by tgb »

jeffbee wrote: post #172
tgb wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the relevance here. Google knows that both sense of "monopoly" can and have been regulated by the government since Standard Oil was broken up. Hence the threat of regulation did not stop Google from investing in innovation.

Does the comparison to Standard Oil stand scrutiny? The case against Standard Oil wasn't merely that they were popular. After all, kerosene is an undifferentiated commodity where consumers have no preference other than price. The case against Standard Oil was that they held such a breadth of natural resources (which are exclusive; no two parties can pump oil the same barrel of crude oil), and capital-intensive assets…

The comparison holds up if the claim, as stickfigure made, was that the relevant factor is whether or not there is a legally-enforced monopoly. US vs Microsoft shows that the factors you cite aren't necessary either.

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

#267

Post by _skel »

CPLX wrote: post #220
twblalock wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the threat stopped them from dominating the browser market and enabled the first dot-com explosion. The first dot-com explosion was well under way at that point. Microsoft's domination of the desktop didn't stop any e-commerce companies.

The inquiry was opened in the early 90's and Microsoft's first consent decree to stop them from tying was in 1994. They later argued that IE shouldn't count and continued to bundle Explorer with Windows, and the US DOJ plus twenty states sued over it in 1998. So, no. The threats of antitrust enforcement against MS were a key part of the timeline for the first dot-com explosion, as they made MS curtail their behavior…

Microsoft didn't compete in e-commerce. They competed on desktop operating systems.

Name an e-commerce company Microsoft tried to compete with.

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

#268

Post by jldugger »

amelius wrote: post #23
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ads have very good click and conversion metrics, if you're not sophisticated it looks like a good idea to cannibalize your organic traffic that way.

The problem is that your competitors can use your name as keyword, and become the top result for your company name ...

Only if people actually click on competitor ads. I imagine it's pretty rare anyone searches for ebay and clicks on amazon ads instead. So you're uniquely situated to outbid the competition with absurdly low CPC because click through rate is dramatically higher.

And sure, it's not fun handing over money to defend your brand. I could see an argument be made that you want the competitors to outbid you because the costs are so high for them.

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

#269

Post by dumbfoundded »

scarface74 wrote: post #259
dumbfoundded wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to have worked well. I doubt you're using Internet Explorer to respond to me. The antitrust case was about bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. It was called the Browser Wars and related to preventing Netscape from competing. The result is pretty obvious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... .

It was also about operating systems and productivity software. Now instead of having an operating system vendor with 80% market share now we have an ad vendor. Win???? Meet the new boss....

Those investigations were closed. Maybe it's more of a failure of the legal system than anything. The one thing that sticked actually seemed to work in the long run.

Isn't this whole conversation around Google being a monopoly? Yes, a new boss and hopefully a new antitrust case. Hopefully more sticks this time.

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

#270

Post by the-dude »

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.

The Dutch payment system iDeal charges between a couple of cents for the big retailers to maybe 15 - 20 cents for small fish.

These fees are absolute, not relative to the purchase amount.

edit : I meant our PIN payments card, not iDeal. But the point is true for both.

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