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

dispatch.com

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

#261

Post by woodruffw »

sneak wrote: post #229
woodruffw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People opted in to that. You don't opt in to the water pipe monopoly. I accept this argument for social media, but I don't think I do for online identities that are tightly integrated into financial and government services. I happen to be sufficiently positioned to cause a big stink if Google arbitrarily bans my GSuite account; the average person probably isn't, and would have to spend weeks reidentifying themselve…

You opted in to G Suite by pointing your domain there, as well. You can opt out just as quickly. Every time you smash that "log in with google" button, you're opting in to letting Google serve as intermediary for access to your account at a third party. People are fools for doing this, but it's not Google's fault.

> You opted in to G Suite by pointing your domain there, as well. You can opt out just as quickly.

I won't deny that I opted in to a particular service, or that I can opt out just as quickly. But cf. the other threads about my formal recourses, quality of service, and others' expectations around reliability of delivery should I choose to leave the Google bubble.

Google's fault or not, I don't think this is an acceptable situation.

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

#262

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #159
satellite2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, it's really cool that a company has done a good enough job in so many different areas that the other alternatives are often unambiguously worse.

No, its products are forced down your threat and impossible to avoid.

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

#263

Post by ipaddr »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #191
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.

> 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.

Tiktok has a lot of interesting videos and a big english audience

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

#264

Post by FridayoLeary »

supernova87a wrote: post #212

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…

In the UK the government imposed a quota to the utility companies for smart meter installations. Hence they are desperate to boost adoption, recently they have drafted Albert Einstein into their all-out advertising campaign. The government is clearly anxious to push this change which is precisely why i'm not rushing.

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

#265

Post by ClumsyPilot »

kixiQu wrote: post #204
loup-vaillant wrote: post #191

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.

Its rair for something to be so accurately true, yet so irrelevant

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

#266

Post by notatoad »

Buttons840 wrote: post #219
notatoad wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when people talk about the "the internet" being a public utility, they mean internet access . which is "a thing", and is a single discrete idea. public utility status for the internet means that every packet delivered over internet protocol (aka "IP", which again, is a thing ) must be delivered by the carrier/ISP without discrimination.

Yes. If my service was declared a common carrier I'd experiment with creating my own ISP and banning people at the ISP level, which also happens to be the only ISP hosting my service. This is why this doesn't make sense. Some internet companies can arbitrarily block you and others can't?

It doesn't make sense if your goal is to create a fair internet for everybody, or to build a consistent set of rules based on reasonable principles.

it makes perfect sense if you are a politician looking to hop on the anti-google bandwagon enough to make it look like you're doing something without actually doing anything.

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

#268

Post by justicezyx »

Given the use of information search, and its importance as the tool for gather factual data, conventional search indexing should be a public utility.

Like rail road, motor road, electricity, which were started as private enterprises, and eventually turn into public utility. Information search appears on the same route.

But, the catch is that "Internet" the physical infrastructure should be turned into public utility first. And then we can discuss the fundamental services running on Internet.

So I support this direction. But I think the focus of the effort to be on turning Internet into public utility, right now.

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

#269

Post by jsnell »

woodruffw wrote: post #246
jsnell wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's follow that argument to its logical conclusion. There is nothing special about the property you've described here. My high school, university, half a dozen previous employers, and several ISPs also gave me email addresses. I did not get to keep any of them when leaving those institutions. What about smaller webmail providers? Yahoo and Hotmail gave me email addresses back in the day, and then deleted them for i…

My university sheltered me and gave me a physical address, during which time that address formed an essential part of identifying myself to my bank(s) and the US Government. You'll note that I haven't said anywhere that Google (or anyone else!) is obligated to provide indefinite email service to anybody who happens to sign up. What I've observed is that, unlike my physical address, there are virtually no formal recou…

What do physical addresses have to do with this? The discussion was about email.

I understood your argument to be "email addresses are important" + "Google provides email addreses" -> "Google should be regulated as a public utility". But like I showed, the same applies to basically every kind of organization providing email addresses.

So either you are asking for basically every single organization to be a public utility, or there is some discriminating function you're not stating.

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

#270

Post by crocal »

wyager wrote: post #205
leafmeal wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least with government we have the powers of oversight and political organizing. It seems like a better bet then a corporation who's accountable to a bottom line, or owners.

I trust "political organizing" (codeword for astroturfing and cathedral control) less than I trust Google's profit interests.

I guess you are ready for dictatorship then?
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