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

rankscience.com

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

#361

Post by stjohnswarts »

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.

Google could be broken up pretty easily into 3 or 4 units. Facebook, I don't know how you break it up except instagram/facebook would be pretty clean but insta is a fairly small business compared to the big ol' facebook machine. Apple could be busted up fairly easily phone/computer/accessories companies. I'm not sure how you would break up Amazon. Maybe Amazon sells only and then 3rd party sales could be busted out on its own but I think it would die pretty quickly without easy access to the shipping and logistics part of Amazon.

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

#362

Post by stjohnswarts »

stickfigure wrote: post #103
tgb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't this already happened with Bell and Bell Labs? Why didn't the breakup of Bell stop Google from investing in innovation?

Bell was a real monopoly - as in, it was literally illegal to start a competing phone company. This is much different from "monopoly" with quotes, as in "gee whiz they seem so big and popular it must be a monopoly ".

I think we need a new "antitrust" law that says companies can grow too big and influential. That's one of the big downfalls of capitalism, without restraints it can easily allow corporations and people to accumulate and hoard too much wealth and influence at which point it becomes a hindrance to society as a whole rather than a positive

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

#363

Post by joshuamorton »

Const-me wrote: post #358
joshuamorton wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want search results to depend on my choice of web technologies (see AMP), or commercial relations between search engine and third parties. (I work at Google, but not on search). My understanding is that AMP doesn't actually affect ranking. Performance affects ranking, and AMP affects performance. But so do many other things. There's also a similar conversation about placement (the "carousel"), which isn't r…

> My understanding is that AMP doesn't actually affect ranking They tell they use AMP versions to measure performance, and the performance affects ranking. AMP is hosted by the same google who does ranking, they gonna measure better performance because it’s their local network. Not sure it was an oversight, looks more like cheating. Apparently, they’re planning to revert in 2021, but I think it’s too little too late.…

Note that you've subtly changed the discussion from "here's why Google should be a public utility" to "here's what personally perturbs me about Google, and why I dislike it".

> Google’s “Ad” is barely noticeable, DDG’s “Ad” has very noticeable outline. Google doesn’t show URL, DDG does.

This is personal preference (and possibly subject to experiments), but when I searched "android phone", I found it easier to differentiate ads on Google (which shows "Ad" at the beginning of the line) than DDG (which shows "Ad" at the end, or on a second line if the title overflows). Both show URLs.

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

#364

Post by Shared404 »

Const-me wrote: post #336
a1369209993 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Isn't there a fallback driver that almost all graphics cards support?

It seems like if anyone wrote a single implementation of that it would work.

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

#365

Post by ggggtez »

This guy is clueless.

He's mad that Google has a partnership with some food ordering app that takes a cut.

If that 3-5% cut he's complaining about was pure waste, then why does Google partner with anyone at all? They could take that 3-5% themselves!

It's because it's not probably not completely trivial. So having a governmental agency in charge of this... It's complete lunacy. They are going to be more cost effective than a profit-motivated company?

And who pays for the government to implement this "Google" public utility? How many HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS in taxes are we talking about, in order to avoid paying a 3% premium for people who don't want to talk to a restaurant on the phone?

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

#367

Post by scarface74 »

rmacqueen wrote: post #341
scarface74 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top of the funnel is the url bar. People choose to go to Google.

And people 'chose' to have a Microsoft operating system in the late 90s. What's your point?

No people didn’t choose to have Microsoft. Microsoft forced OEMs to bundle Windows with all of their computers. Even if the OEM decided not to bundle Windows, they still had to pay a license fee.

No personal computer comes with Chrome installed by default unless the OEM made a deal with Google to bundle it along with other crapware. Users have to explicitly download Chrome.

It’s a lot easier to change your default search engine than change your operating system.

The proof is in Google’s dominance. Google became popular when IE was the default browser on PCs and Safari was the default browser on Macs.

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

#368

Post by dumbfoundded »

treis wrote: post #313
dumbfoundded wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google clearly meets the definition of a monopoly. It comes down to 3 things: Market power, Exclusionary Conduct, and Business Justification (1). Microsoft was charged as a monopoly but you could always just use linux. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that Google is harming the consumer by using their dominate market power in search to push their own, worse products. (1) https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competitio…

> their dominate market power in search to push their own, worse products. This is the central problem. Yes, Google use market dominance to push their products. But by and large their products were also better. Gmail was better than Yahoo/Hotmail. Chrome was better than Firefox/IE. Maps better than MapQuest. Android was better than what non-Apple phone makers were using.

Just like Microsoft did in the 80s/90s, Google has created some awesome products. At some point, it stops being worth it to compete and way easier to leverage existing strengths. For example, any product that relies on Adwords sales, Google can bid infinitely high and take the top spot. Or in the case of search, just putting their widgets in at the top like they've done for flights. It stops being about creating a better product and only about creating a winning product. Competition is really hard and risky. Owning your competitor's sales channel and then pushing them out is so much easier. Google now seems to be crossing this line.

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

#369

Post by bryan_w »

pydry wrote: post #247
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.

The government doesn't need to seize google. They can vertically deintegrate it. Google the index could sell its services to google the search engine the same way bing the index sells itself to duckduckgo the search engine. Or the same way that standard oil's railroads were forced to provide the same prices to everybody. Then, google the index could be forced to not provide preferential pricing to google the search e…

The problem is that unlike oil or phone lines, it's not physical infrastructure, so the government could order all they want and Google can respond by rm -rf / on all their servers and walking away and founding "google2" tomorrow that happens to do all the things Google did and another 20+ year cycle starts again

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

#370

Post by Const-me »

joshuamorton wrote: post #363
Const-me wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that AMP doesn't actually affect ranking They tell they use AMP versions to measure performance, and the performance affects ranking. AMP is hosted by the same google who does ranking, they gonna measure better performance because it’s their local network. Not sure it was an oversight, looks more like cheating. Apparently, they’re planning to revert in 2021, but I think it’s too little too late.…

Note that you've subtly changed the discussion from "here's why Google should be a public utility" to "here's what personally perturbs me about Google, and why I dislike it". > Google’s “Ad” is barely noticeable, DDG’s “Ad” has very noticeable outline. Google doesn’t show URL, DDG does. This is personal preference (and possibly subject to experiments), but when I searched "android phone", I found it easier to differe…

> here's why Google should be a public utility

I don’t think it’s too important. What’s important is enforceable regulations. There’re many industries that aren’t public utilities but are heavily regulated for safety reasons, e.g. food production and air transportation.

> This is personal preference (and possibly subject to experiments)

http://const.me/tmp/web-search/g1.png Just two “Ad” letters with no other visual cues.

http://const.me/tmp/web-search/g2.png The first fair search result, note the scroll bar position on the right, there’re 2 pages of garbage above. No URLs anywhere. Right click / copy link is broken as well, copies “google.com/url?” something.

http://const.me/tmp/web-search/ddg.png “AD” is uppercase, outlined, also note the “Report Ad” text. The combination of these 3 things makes ads clearly marked as such, unlike google’s result page. Note the initial portion of the result URL is visible, not just the domain. Right click / copy link works. The fair search results start at the top of the page, immediately after a paid one.

There’s no motivation for google to be friendlier towards users or web site owners. Quite the opposite, they have strong financial incentive to mix ads into fair results. The only way to fix that is legal pressure with laws and/or antimonopoly prosecution.

It worked with Microsoft in 1998-2001. In 2000 a court ordered breakup of MS. They won the appeal so it didn’t happen, but they were really scared apparently. They were also forced to change a lot of things in their products, which benefit both end users, and third-party developers. I don’t see how de-facto monopoly in web search is different from de-facto monopoly in PC OSes.

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