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

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

#161

Post by sbazerque »

genericuser314 wrote: post #148
pcmoney wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have multiple choices for water, dig a well, buy it from the local grocery store. Same for sewage because self composting toilets exist. Also electricity isn't a utility just use a stationary bike as a generator or buy solar panels... Just because you have multiple choices doesn't mean something is/isn't a utility. Its pretty arbitrary. They also aren't talking about Google products (most of which are completely…

I think you're making a category error in your analogy. DuckDuckGo is much more like Google than "dig a well" is like municipal water.

I think he's not - when you look at it from the point of view of someone who wants to buy search advertisements.

Duck Duck Go doesn't come nearly close to the kind of reach Google has.

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

#162

Post by dumbfoundded »

genericuser314 wrote: post #148
pcmoney wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have multiple choices for water, dig a well, buy it from the local grocery store. Same for sewage because self composting toilets exist. Also electricity isn't a utility just use a stationary bike as a generator or buy solar panels... Just because you have multiple choices doesn't mean something is/isn't a utility. Its pretty arbitrary. They also aren't talking about Google products (most of which are completely…

I think you're making a category error in your analogy. DuckDuckGo is much more like Google than "dig a well" is like municipal water.

There are at least a dozen companies you can buy water from and have it delivered to a giant storage tank made by at least 5 different companies. Or you could use a number of companies to dig a well for you.

Many people don't have access to municipal water and when I didn't, this is what I did.

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

#163

Post by vvillena »

jolmg wrote: post #24
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty much impossible to function in modern society without an email address that you can rely on.

But Google isn't the only provider of email addresses. In contrast, water utilities typically hold monopoly over their region. EDIT: Many people are replying with some variant that the problem is that Google can block the email account that people have tied to their financial and government services. But the same is true of any other email provider. If Google is somehow turned into a public utility, how does that sol…

In some countries water distribution companies are not the same as the commercial suppliers, and you can freely contract your supply with any company you want.

The issue isn't that people are free to choose any email address. The problem is that Google effectively holds people hostage once they get involved with its ecosystem. And due to its sheer size and power, no one can afford to be banned by Google. And there's no real way to appeal. It's a rights regression of sorts.

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

#164

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

woodruffw wrote: post #152
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get the email address attached to any irl accounts reassigned by presenting yourself to the bank branch in person with ID. Probably there are mechanisms using certified mail as well for places that don't have nearby branch offices. It would be inconvenient but Google does not have the ability to unilaterally separate you from your financial accounts on any kind of permanent basis.

It occurs to me that I don't have an exhaustive list of all of the accounts that I've signed up to over the years with my email address. If I'm banned by my provider, I won't have any recourse for many of them except to discover at some point in the future that I've missed an important alert, billing statement, or notice of action. And that's even before I know that I need to go to a physical location or mail in some…

You can as easily have the same problem with physical mail, but that doesn't confer an indefinite right to a particular physical address. I do encourage keeping backups of your email to reduce this risk -- at least you can search your records that way.

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

#165

Post by babypuncher »

mansion7 wrote: post #129
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.

I don't think I've seen anyone get banned from any major platform for their political beliefs. It has always been for hate speech, inciting real-world violence, or spreading blatantly false misinformation that lead to incitements of violence (such as the unfounded claims that the election was stolen).

Funny how none of the Republicans pushing this censorship narrative batted an eye last summer when Facebook was taking down local BLM groups that called for violence.

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

#166

Post by avs733 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #34

> the lawsuit seeks a legal declaration that Google is a "common carrier," like phone, gas and electric companies, which must provide its services to anyone willing to pay its fee. How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?

Because bad faith arguments don't necessitate logical consistency.

The motivation here is they want to regulate Google for political purposes, not that they want to regulate utilities better.

If you have questions, Dave Yost's political donors are public information:

https://www6.ohiosos.gov/ords/f?p=CFDISCLOSURE:48:0::NO:RP:P...

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

#167

Post by vvillena »

Buttons840 wrote: post #34

> the lawsuit seeks a legal declaration that Google is a "common carrier," like phone, gas and electric companies, which must provide its services to anyone willing to pay its fee. How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?

You don't have to have internet access to have an internet presence.

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

#168

Post by l33t2328 »

epigen wrote: post #89
Buttons840 wrote: post #34

> the lawsuit seeks a legal declaration that Google is a "common carrier," like phone, gas and electric companies, which must provide its services to anyone willing to pay its fee. How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?

> How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier? Because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen. Maybe Google is the last straw that leads to proper governance of utilities in the public's interest.

It’s kind of analogous to the way TCP can be a reliable service built on unreliable IP.

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

#170

Post by ocdtrekkie »

the_only_law wrote: post #40
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comcast isn't a global monopoly. It's a small regional monopoly in some rural areas where it's mostly unprofitable for other ISPs to build out. Comcast just lacks Google's PR flair, and doesn't have an army of paid lobbying organizations entirely focused around making them look like a public good. (And yes, TechDirt is one of these paid organizations.)

How is google a global monopoly, there are other search engines out there, other mobile operating systems, other cloud providers, etc. EDIT: not even trying to bicker, there are multiple comments calling Google a monopoly, but I have no idea what market they dominate, or perhaps I’m misunderstanding what I monopoly is.

So, for one, "monopoly" doesn't technically concern "literally only one", but that it has a "dominant market share". Monopoly is a term that feels a bit too narrow, but it's understood to apply to the issue a bit more broadly in law and legal discussions. In many cases, you're understood to be a monopoly if you have say, 70% of a market or more.

Google is over 85% of all search traffic. Now, you might argue as Google has, that sure, anyone can change their default search to Bing. However, the issue with dominant companies is the network and second order effects of how they impact everything else.

For example, Google's search data is primarily refined by "the fact that everyone is searching with Google". So the more popular Google becomes, the better it's data becomes... and the less possible it is for other search engines to compete. It's not a talent problem, it's a data problem.

But another big aspect is the other side of a search transaction: The websites you find with Google. Since Google is 85% of search, Google search rankings determine if businesses survive, pretty much singlehandedly. It doesn't matter if you're first on Bing, because people who find you on Bing aren't enough to sustain your business. You must be findable on Google.

Often, that means businesses must do business with Google: The first "search result" on Google search is almost always a paid advertisement. Businesses are forced to do business with Google to exist, and the fact that other search engines exist is... mostly irrelevant to them. This also means Google can dictate what websites can and can't display, what technologies they must and must not use, etc. AMP is terrible but Google was giving preferential treatment to websites with AMP, so AMP is understandably all over the place now.

Mobile operating systems is an intriguing one, because believe it or not, if you understand the market they're in Android is a total monopoly. Android is 100% of the mobile operating system market. The default question to ask is "what about iOS", and the answer is simple: iOS isn't on the market. Because the market isn't consumers, it's phone manufacturers, and Apple iOS is only available for the Apple iPhone.

If you're Samsung or HTC or Lenovo or Huawei or ZTE or Motorola, you have one option to sell phones: Sell Androids. Sure, Huawei has forked Android because it got banned by the US, but it's still Android. The only competitor in the mobile OS space that had any traction at all was Windows Mobile and it's dead. If you go into a cell carrier store today, they'll sell you an iPhone, or they'll sell you two dozen phones that all run the only operating system on the market: Android.

Android has an "other side" aspect too: App developers. Even if iOS exists, businesses have to develop Android apps to reach consumers on mobile devices, and that means they have to do business with Google. And not just app development companies either. Imagine if Allstate Insurance said their app was only available on iOS: Pretty much every business in every category of industry ends up having to do business with Google. And that's a monopoly.

Google isn't a monopoly in cloud providers, it's actually in like fourth place. Apparently they're just... not good at everything. *shrug*

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