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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

#251
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. Not video hosting you don't. If you want to build a significant English speaking audience, your only real choice is YouTube, because that's where people search from. Seriously, who has a "Vimeo" app on their phone? On their set-top box? Same thing if you want to watch interesting videos: most of the content is on YouTube.

That's not video hosting that's monopolyish, then, that's English-speaking-audience video discovery , which is a quite different proposition.

To be fair, “English-speaking” is pretty relevant in the state/country being discussed.

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

#252
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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…

I think the suggestion is breaking up alphabet, which is quite literally loads of companies. YouTube, Google search, deep mind, Google fiber, waymo, Fitbit etc Seems pretty easy to break up if you want to.

> I think the suggestion is breaking up alphabet, which is quite literally loads of companies.

Few, if any of those companies would be viable on their own. They require monopoly support. For example Google Cloud loses a billion a quarter (they spent $5B last quarter total in $4B).

As far as the cloud market goes there's really only one player, the profitable, pure play AWS. Everybody else is losing money, and mostly fudging the numbers (Google "cloud" includes Gmail, Google Workspace etc; MS's cloud includes running Windows for big customers, Office 360 etc etc).

Nest is marginally profitable.

Otherwise it's pretty thin gruel.

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

#254

A big problem with software and people who write software (often) is that software doesn't like all the ways that human beings misbehave, change their minds, don't have immutable states, and don't fit into the categories you build for them. So any system that has a duty to serve everyone eventually ends up with an operational component that has almost as much human interaction and problem solving required as the soft…

Earnest question - Why does the utility have to honor the request of the owner? Doesn't the utility own the meter and is allowed to make changes to it as it sees fit?

[deleted]

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

#255
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. Not video hosting you don't. If you want to build a significant English speaking audience, your only real choice is YouTube, because that's where people search from. Seriously, who has a "Vimeo" app on their phone? On their set-top box? Same thing if you want to watch interesting videos: most of the content is on YouTube.

That's not video hosting that's monopolyish, then, that's English-speaking-audience video discovery , which is a quite different proposition.

Agreed, but that's a technicality. What matters is, if you want to make a living, you have to host on YouTube. (You can host elsewhere, but over 99% of your revenue will come from your notoriety at YouTube, if not YouTube directly.)

And if you want videos, they're all on YouTube. You can search for them elsewhere but most of the content is on YouTube, and you won't avoid it even if your search started from a general purpose search engine like DuckDuckGo.

One notable exception of course is porn. But that's such a separated segment that it's pretty obvious I meant "non-porn videos" all along in this thread.

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

#256
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wells dug with modern equipment are a perfectly good alternative to municipal water - they can free one from over-regulated or poorly managed utilities. Even in the outskirts of California metros it's sometimes the only option without shelling out hundreds of thousands for extensions. DuckDuckGo, on the other hand, is just Google with bangs, an insignificant spec compared to the latter. Edit: DuckDuckGo US market sha…

> Wells dug with modern equipment are a perfectly good alternative to municipal water ... in certain geologic areas. And this doesn't work if you live in an apartment. I do feel like this is a big example of the "why don't you just" discussion from last week.

"Why don't you do something that works for over 40 million people all over the US" is a very far cry from "why don't you build your own power plant, datacenter, and networking infrastructure." It's a far better argument than DDG which - if my usage is anything to go by - is just a frontend for Google with convenient shortcuts to specialized searches like Github.

If you live in an apartment, you live in a multi-family building built by a developer with a lot more money than a single family can spend. They're exactly the ones who can afford alternatives, like paying the city to tear up roads and lay down a pipe to municipal water.

The point is that a well supports a tiny number of people compared to a municipal water system, but it's a real alternative. In the search engine space, DDG is just token opposition and there is no one analogous to a property developer that can afford a competitor to municipal water so it's Google or nothing.

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

#257
post #20
post #2

So Republicans have completely flipped on the sovereignity of private companies? Or is this just posturing to please the number one of the GOP (Dave Yost filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of invalidating 2020 votes in Pennsylvania)?

Republicans are a coalition party, just like the democrats are. It's really important to remember just how broad of a group those 2 parties cover. AOC said it correctly in Jan 2020[0]: "In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are." So while there are free-enterprise republicans, there are also those that worry about how companies behave. At this point, there are D's an…

Not sure why the downvotes. A consequence of our two-party system is that both parties end up being uneasy coalitions of many different "parties."

The Republicans have long been an uneasy coalition of the religious right, paleoconservatives, fascists, economic libertarians, right leaning neocons and neoliberals, and mid-century centrist "Eisenhower conservatives." Major fault lines have been between the libertarians and the religious right and between the neocons and the paleocons and nativists.

The Democrats have long been an uneasy coalition of left leaning neocons and neoliberals, social libertarians, anti-war activists, minorities who feel threatened by Republican tolerance of racism and nativism in their "big tent," atheists and minority religions who feel threatened by the religious right, and socialists. Major fault lines have been between the socialists and the various economic centrist or libertarian factions, between socially conservative minorities and the social liberals, and between the neocons / neoliberals and the anti-war / anti-empire factions.

Each party contains at least three or four other parties within.

A shuffle seems to be happening right now where the nativist, paleocon, and fascist parts of the Republican Party have gained power at the expense of the neocons and neoliberals after the latter discredited themselves with the Iraq war disaster and the 2008 financial bailout shitshow (which can technically be blamed on both parties since Obama presided over some of it).

Another shuffle occurring is that libertarianism has really taken a hit as a result of anxiety over wealth distribution and issues with globalism and neoliberalism. Many libertarians on the right have been converted to the alt-right/fascist side, and on the left quite a few have gone further left economically and joined the AOC wing of the party.

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

#258
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.

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…

It might be out off topic, but this reminded me of one of the songs that gets recorded and released with every new version of OpenBSD[1], when we're talking about water. It's fun.

[1]https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#36

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

#259

Well, a public utility also doesn't have the right to do this: "You did something wrong, we won't tell you what it was, there's no chance of appeal, and you are now banned from receiving water service again, ever, for the rest of your life, no matter where you move. And don't try moving in with someone else who's still receiving service, because they'll get banned too."

Actually they can. Someone i know has a restraining order from ohio dmv (bmv) for getting into argument there and can’t get dl there. Hilarious regulation coming from the state that completely privatized their dmv services

And I thought Louisiana charging a fee for using a debit card at state dmv (OMV) offices instead of cash [1] courtesy of Bobby Jindal was something. Sad to see my state of origin has outstripped that.

[1] I should also mention the time I looked at my driving record in Louisiana and discovered the remnant of their pre-1981 practice of putting race on driver's licenses. Under my ethnic category (which I had never filled out or been asked) was 'O'. I turned to the clerk and asked "What does this stand for?" She replied "Other." I said "I thought maybe it would be Oriental" (since I am Pakistani-American). She replied "That would be too politically incorrect." I said, "My expectations for this state in that regard are not high."

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

#260
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.

Try finding a smartphone under 250$, try advertising any small business on the internet, try avoiding meets meeting when you apply for a job

These are things that are done locally. You can find a smartphone for under 250 at any phone store. Or by calling a number. I got one by text the other day through my carrier. I can't find an iphone 12 for that online or locally legally and I would have better luck getting a stolen phone cheaper locally.

Small business are finding success through facebook and other social platforms. Not sure google is a player here. Remember google+? I can't believe they shut that down with a decent userbase because it didn't reach some scale meanwhile any startup would have called it a big success and built on it.

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