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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

#451

Post by amadeuspagel »

If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here.

The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin's skyline, before you see links to other image search sites.

Same is true for a lot other stuff. If you search "timer", you'll see a timer, not links to various timers that look ugly as shit.

As a consumer, I love it. So much easier.

On the other hand, google could take over almost any business like this. At least, any business that is "functional" in the sense that the only thing you really want is to get some output based on your input.

There's a clear tradeoff here between what's good for consumers, and concerns about democracy, the concentration of power, etc.. And also innovation. Why start a new company, if google can just take over everything?

There are only two clear, non-arbitrary rules: Search engines are only allowed to show a list of links, or search engines can show whatever they want.

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

#452

Post by foolfoolz »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #451

If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…

no one is forcing you to use google. you could always pick a different one if you want different results

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

#453

Post by steveklabnik »

SilverRed wrote: post #388
ipaddr wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefiox: I remember the first few versions since the rewrite. It was very fast. Fast forward to today and it's so slow. What is the reason? Are the privacy changes affecting this by using more resources or pages are requesting domains that hang for too long? It gives rust a bad name because this is one of the bigger rust products I know.

Hardly any of firefox is using rust. Servo was abandoned. I think the only rust part of FF right now is the CSS engine.

> I think the only rust part of FF right now is the CSS engine.

That's not correct.

Currently, 9.5% is Rust https://4e6.github.io/firefox-lang-stats/

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

#454

Post by heisthefox »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #451

If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…

The funny part is that the flight search portion comes from their acquisition of ITA, which I was a part of (worked at ITA when it was acquired). The airlines contract with that system for their own internal search - so who is the real customer there?

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

#455

Post by heisthefox »

foolfoolz wrote: post #452
amadeuspagel wrote: post #451

If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…

no one is forcing you to use google. you could always pick a different one if you want different results

For flights, you could just query the source directly: https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

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

#456

Post by kdmccormick »

foolfoolz wrote: post #452
amadeuspagel wrote: post #451

If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…

no one is forcing you to use google. you could always pick a different one if you want different results

Yes, obviously, you as a user are free to find another search engine.

However, you as a creator are not free to find another universe in which the leading search provider does not use their position of influence to squash any competing products by ranking their own products higher.

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

#457

Post by antihero »

foolfoolz wrote: post #452
amadeuspagel wrote: post #451

If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…

no one is forcing you to use google. you could always pick a different one if you want different results

OP is not arguing the consumer is restricted in choice, more that Google can dominate the market of any information based business by coding a widget because they have a huge amount of data at their disposal.

Much like if you make a good product and sell it on Amazon, Amazon can simply use their might to dupe your product and sell it as AmazonBasics.

So innovation is stifled because the second it becomes profitable a giant can pluck it from your hands and use their power to squash you whilst making money from it.

I am not sure what mechanisms within Capitalism are supposed to protect people from the simple power asymmetry of companies having far more resources money and lawyers doing what the fuck they like.

There should be antitrust lawsuits against all of the giants abusing their power but, because of said power asymmetry, they of course have a huge amount of lobbying power in comparison to anyone else.

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

#458

Post by vxNsr »

tigerBL00D wrote: post #160
genericuser314 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are those the right categories? Utilities are built (at least partially) and maintained using taxpayer money. Google acquired dominance by collecting user data. In both cases users, as a class, get access to essential services that what wouldn't have been possible without their contributions.

Utilities were also originally private competing companies and then they consolidated and the gov decided to make them regulated monopolies bec it made more sense then 10 different companies running their own electric lines. It’s possible to argue that one good search engine makes more sense vs 10 different small ok ones, the gov should step in and regulate.

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

#459

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#460

Post by 29083011397778 »

asimjalis wrote: post #444
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.

DuckDuckGo is 10 characters while Google is 6. That is a 67% overhead. If it was ddg or duck I would be more tempted to use it.

How about duck.com? Though it's an extra letter compared to just google). Alternately, setting it as your default search engine sidesteps the issue just as well :)
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