Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility • Hacker News Board

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#121

Post by stale2002 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #108

stale2002 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even republicans are opposed to anti-competitive behavior done by firms with large amounts of market power. You would be hard pressed to find a modern day Republican who thinks that all water, electricity, and telephone services should have their common carrier status changed. Common carrier laws are uncontroversial, on both sides of the political spectrum. Few people would argue in favor of cutting off power and wat…

Wasn't GOP behind the net neutrality protections repeal?

Maybe on net neutrality, but the point still stands. You are not going to be able to find many modern day republicans who think that it would be OK for electric companies, or water companies, to cut off power from their political opponents.

There are lots of common carrier laws, and anti-monopoly laws that are uncontroversial. Few people would come out in favor of the standard oil monopoly, for example.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#122

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #48

ping_pong wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a direct result of their monopoly, which is why Google should be broken up. Because they have such a huge monopoly, they can afford to ignore customers and have a draconian approach to people, and can get away with it. If there were better competition, they wouldn't have been able to ignore their customers. Breaking them up will alleviate this by ensuring that each company needs to be able to survive on their…

> ...their monopoly, which is why Google should be broken up. Not denying their monopoly position, but how could Google meaningfully be broken up? It's really just a single business (advertising) with a gaggle of loss leaders adding up to less than 20% of revenue. Even pushing advertising down to 80% took a huge amount of effort. It's not like Standard Oil which was a vertically integrated trust of several points in…

[deleted]

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#123

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

Reminds me of Snowcrash, the novel by Neil Stephenson. Technology was so far ahead of conventional people that the US govt became vestigial and largely ignored.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#124

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

obnauticus wrote: post #19

So why aren’t we doing the same thing to Comcast again?

Comcast lobbyists bribe better.

Allegedly.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#125

Post by pcmoney » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

bananabreakfast wrote: post #77

ericmay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even just divesting YouTube would be a start.

YouTube is hardly profitable. They would barely be able to afford their own infrastructure under their current revenue. They would immediately be acquired by a competitor or declare bankruptcy.

You really think someone couldn't build a business out of YouTube independent of Google? Just because it is hardly profitable _now_ as managed by Google in support of ads doesn't mean there isn't another model there.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#126

Post by neuronflux » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #111

adrr wrote: post #95

But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.

Google-avoider checking in! It's actually really easy to avoid it. DuckDuckGo's search quality is better, Firefox is deteriorating daily but still looks and feels better than Chrome does, email should really be avoided but there are dozens of really good email services, and their ad service doesn't need a replacement for obvious reasons (just block it).

I imagine you avoid Google because you don't want to get locked into their centralized closed source ecosystem and don't want them to track your entire online presence. So I'm surprised to see you say email should be avoided, as a completely open decentralized communication protocol.

Your stances on these two topics just seem to be in contrast with each other, would you care to elaborate?

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#127

Post by balls187 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #111

adrr wrote: post #95

But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.

Google-avoider checking in! It's actually really easy to avoid it. DuckDuckGo's search quality is better, Firefox is deteriorating daily but still looks and feels better than Chrome does, email should really be avoided but there are dozens of really good email services, and their ad service doesn't need a replacement for obvious reasons (just block it).

Have you tried the new chromium based Edge?

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#128

Post by cpu_architect » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

bananabreakfast wrote: post #91

aetherson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google controls the vast majority of the web search market. More than 90%. What exactly a monopoly constitutes is something that people can disagree about, but "has 90% market share" is not by any means a crazy definition of a monopoly.

But market share of what? No one pays for web search so that's not really a market. Facebook has 90%+ market share of social media. Do they have a monopoly? GitHub has a 90%+ market share of open source code hosting. Do they have a monopoly?

Markets are not necessarily based on money; they are about exchange. In the web search market, users exchange their attention for search results.

I don’t know whether this kind of market dominance factors into the legal determination of monopoly, but conceptually I think it makes sense to say that Google has a monopoly in the web search market.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#129

Post by mansion7 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

jbgreer wrote: post #7

Interesting approach, especially given that they don't seem to be concerned about having internet service providers declared public utilities.

They may start doing so, if said providers start banning and censoring people based on political beliefs as Google does.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#130

Post by bitcurious » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #95

But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.

1. Planning to avoid Google is a lot easier than being forced to with little/no notice.

2. You’re thinking as an individual, but there’s also how Google treats businesses. It’s a lot harder to replace Google Ads than gmail.