The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by pb7 » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

fuzxi wrote: post #322

pb7 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. You're asking for a seafood restaurant and are given directions to various seafood restaurants. You are not shown directions to one (a link) and when you show up there, it's another (link was fake).

I disagree. We're not talking about an instance where you search for "search engine" and the first result is Google. We're talking about searching for "Bing" and the first result is Google.

And that's the crux of our disagreement. I don't think you have any right to be the first result for any query. If you want Bing when you search for "bing" then go directly to bing.com. You are using a third party's service so you accept the terms of use (and therefore monetization).

If I search "apple", should I get apple.com, a Wikipedia article on apples, or recipes using apples on allrecipe.com, or something else? You see how that doesn't work? What about "caviar"? At what point is Google obligated to show you Caviar the delivery service as the first result? I say never.

Note here that I'm talking about first being first whether it's an ad or organic result.

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

#332

Post by Nasrudith » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

Press2forEN wrote: post #187

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…

People should have feel the burden that taxation places on them. Payroll withholding already artificially dampens the strain that taxation imposes on everyone that earns a paycheck. Issuing a pre-filled out form is another step backwards. Paying taxes should be burdensome and uncomfortable.

That is an ideology and a rather twisted one. We were over this when people were opposing anaglesia and anaesthesia. Wanting people to suffer needlessly is a bad thing.

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

#333

Post by acituan » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 8:40 PM UTC

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…

> This is a beautiful implementation of a tactic to shift a conversation.

Or it is merely contextualizing the debate around what should and should not be considered a public utility by contrasting the case of Google with others. This in turn helps creating consistency and improves our understanding of the matter.

This forum is not the platform where the fate of Google is decided, so "taking attention away" can't really have malicious consequences, if it helps us coming to a principled understanding.

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

#334

Post by MadSudaca » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #254

MadSudaca wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like this aspect of the USA. Most parts of the world, specially more socialistic-leaning countries, would have politicians eager to expand their powers and size of the state so that they have control over a bigger cut of the pie. Of course, this is supposedly for the good of the people. It seems to me that more people is socialistic-minded in the USA these days, to me that looks like a indicator of the dec…

[flagged]

There are many countries. Go live in a +70 in economic freedom and you’ll gain a lot of perspective on the freedoms the USA has.

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

#335

Post by MadSudaca » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #283

MadSudaca wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like this aspect of the USA. Most parts of the world, specially more socialistic-leaning countries, would have politicians eager to expand their powers and size of the state so that they have control over a bigger cut of the pie. Of course, this is supposedly for the good of the people. It seems to me that more people is socialistic-minded in the USA these days, to me that looks like a indicator of the dec…

The thing that always bothered me about this argument is that in reality the US has many more regulations that apply to regular people than most of what you call "socialistic-leaning" countries (one example look at the regulations for what you can or can't do with your house/yard in many suburbs )

Singapour usually ranks top 5 in these lists and it’s forbidden to buy chewing gum there. What baseline are you comparing against?

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

#336

Post by Const-me » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #319

Const-me wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice idea but not sure about the example. > and thus microsoft are no longer the standard 15 years ago was 2005. Imagine MS would open source Windows XP SP2. I don't think anyone would build an OS better than modern Win10 from that code. 15 years is a long time: that WinXP was primarily 32-bit (64 bit build technically existed, but no one used that), it wouldn't support modern hardware, and won't run modern software…

> Imagine MS would open source Windows XP SP2. [...] I don't think anyone would build an OS better than modern Win10 from that code. Uh, yes they would? It's literally trivial - you just hit compile. As you note, a 64-bit build did exist, so it's not even limited to now-obsolete hardware, although unless you want to call some of the things at [0] automatically better than XP just because they run on amd64, even that…

> it's not even limited to now-obsolete hardware

That's not correct, it is limited. The primary reason being GPU drivers, Vista switched to hardware compositor, as a side effect they reworked kernel API of GPU drivers. I don't think Intel, NVidia or AMD ship drivers for WinXP x64, or Server 2003, for their current generations of products. To lesser extent, same applies to the rest of the hardware: I don't expect it's easy to boot XP from NVME SSD, or support modern flavours of wireless like 802.11n or BT4.

Software is even more diverse, vast majority of modern apps won't run on XP64. For the software that I currently work on, the largest missing pieces are Direct3D 11, Direct2D, DirectWrite, Media Foundation, and .NET framework. These components are huge, Microsoft spent many millions to make them.

Windows is not just code, it's an ecosystem.

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

#337

Post by Nasrudith » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

theplague42 wrote: post #277

badRNG wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolization of any industry isn't high up there on the priority list of issues we should address by far . Climate change, election interference, and COVID-19 are far more pressing issues than monopolization. However the fact that these other bigger issues exist doesn't mean we shouldn't care about or take action on the lesser. If one brings up how we should address issue 'x' and are met with "but what about issue…

So when Facebook has a monopoly on social media and allows misinformation to spread about _those exact three topics_, what would you suggest we do about it?

That post is ironically itself misinformation and leading assumptions.

1. Facebook is a monopoly on social media is a false assumption. Even limiting it to the mainstream there is reddit and twitter. Tumblr a prior competitor essentially died by "suicide" after being bought up. 2. That allowing misinformation is a problem and something that "we" should do about it. That is not only contrary to the first ammendment but suffers from watching the watchmen problems. 3. To demand to be able to stop it on a technical level is absued epistemologically as asking bullets to only kill bad people or encryption to let "good guys" in. 4. Misinformation itself is contextual. "Bleach kills the Coronavirus." is true. Saying "Bleach kills the Coronavirus!" in the context of cleaning treatment equipment is still technically true but there may be implementation issues with what may be washed safely and misses nuance when it corrodes fittings. Saying "Bleach kills the Coronavirus" as a treatment itself is misinformation because it will kill the patient before it cures them in the same way a bleach embalming could eradicate infectious agents.

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

#338

Post by komali2 » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

Shared404 wrote: post #329

komali2 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you do trust search from Google? If Google decides that it wants the Libertarian party to supplant the Republican party, and begins aggressively tailoring results to that end, what consequences are there? Why wouldn't they do that if they could get away with it? We didn't elect google executives, we have no recourse beyond political theater like the recent congressional hearings.

To be honest, I don't trust either. However, I think I trust government less, if only slightly. I also don't use Google.

Just curious, what do you use?

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

#339

Post by tgb » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

auganov wrote: post #289

tgb wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most common proposals I've seen are to break Google into multiple companies, particularly with search being separate. This seems adequately specific. (Though obviously different from the public-utility plan in this article.) Is that not specific enough for you? This seems vastly simpler than GPDR in scope and with much more relevant precedent to draw from.

Well a breakup is definitely easier to define. But you should specify along which lines. YouTube is the obvious one. Maybe a bunch of other acquisitions that aren't too techy can be rolled back. What about other products? Gmail? Maps? Android/App Store? Chrome? Google News? Shopping? Translate? Docs? Should these be separate companies? Only once you define that can the plan be criticized. This is so much easier to do…

This is an example of why I think you are placing the burden of detail too high. The discussion was about the case for why something needed to be done, not specifically what. Yet a lack-of-sufficiently-detailed-solution let's you shut it down. Even in the case of a fairly clear proposal, it's not detailed enough. Search is Google's biggest monopoly and a proposal to separate that out would be obvious. Is Shopping really relevant? To the lawyers figuring out the details it is, but not for this discussion.

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

#340

Post by fuzxi » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #331

fuzxi wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We're not talking about an instance where you search for "search engine" and the first result is Google. We're talking about searching for "Bing" and the first result is Google.

And that's the crux of our disagreement. I don't think you have any right to be the first result for any query. If you want Bing when you search for "bing" then go directly to bing.com. You are using a third party's service so you accept the terms of use (and therefore monetization). If I search "apple", should I get apple.com, a Wikipedia article on apples, or recipes using apples on allrecipe.com, or something else…

>And that's the crux of our disagreement. I don't think you have any right to be the first result for any query. If you want Bing when you search for "bing" then go directly to bing.com. You are using a third party's service so you accept the terms of use (and therefore monetization).

What if I didn't want to go directly to bing.com, but just wanted to know more about Bing? Maybe I want to see some reviews and determine if it's appropriate for my use-case. But then there's a big ad as the first search result for "bing" that says, "Looking for Bing? They suck! Use Google instead!"

>If I search "apple", should I get apple.com, a Wikipedia article on apples, or recipes using apples on allrecipe.com, or something else? You see how that doesn't work? What about "caviar"? At what point is Google obligated to show you Caviar the delivery service as the first result? I say never.

I definitely see your point here, and I do agree - in circumstances like that. However, I've only been talking about the ads that are above the first result, not organic results. No, there's no special reason that apple.com should or shouldn't be the first organic result for "apple", but as I hope I showed above, there are reasons that the first result, which is always an ad, shouldn't be microsoft.com, or samsung.com, or alibaba.com/knockoff_iphone. It forces companies to choose between buying the ad space themselves or allowing a competitor to advertise directly to their potential customers. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a digital protection racket, but I do think it can be used maliciously.