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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

#541

Post by minsc__and__boo »

tyingq wrote: post #534
minsc__and__boo wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being popular != Monopoly Having Market Share Dominance != Monopoly Being a monopoly means having sole control over the supply of a market (conversely, Monopsony is demand ). When people say Bing, Baidu, DDG, Yahoo, DDG, etc. are all a click a way, that means Google does not control the market supply. Just because the majority of people choose to use something on an open market doesn't mean that thing has a monopoly.

Schmidt seems concerned they are in that territory. Also, the document I linked to, presumably written by people with deep expertise on the topic, has several relevant sections. One excerpt: === A. GOOGLE HAS MONOPOLY POWER IN RELEVANT MARKETS A firm is a monopolist if it can profitably raise prices substantially above the competitive level. [M]onopoly power may be inferred from a firm's possesion of a dominant share…

Eric Schmidt is not Google.

Also, a half-redacted document written by an anonymous person that was accidentally released almost a decade ago does not change the definition of a monopoly.

Yes, you can assume that it's written by someone who knows what they're talking about, just as much as you can also presume they were wrong because it was squashed. That's a moot argument.

None of that changes the fact that being popular does not make something a monopoly.

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

#543

Post by seanmcdirmid »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #438
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most apartment buildings won't let you store large amounts of water on property.

That's not even remotely comparable. Firstly it's not structurally practical to store giant tanks of water on private property. So the comparison makes no practical sense anyway. But more, there is a significant market for private water in other properties. It's a non-trivial market which serves a significant proportion of the US population. There is no significant market for private/non-Google search. Not only is DD…

When I lived in China, I didn't have the luxury of having access to Google, so I used Bing instead. It was actually quite reasonable for most of my needs, I'm not sure why more people don't give it a go. Of course, now that I live in the states again, I use Google, but most of my searching is on YouTube anyways (which was something else I didn't have access to in China).

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

#544

Post by minsc__and__boo »

rgbrenner wrote: post #538
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…

google could take over almost any business like this. That didn't happen to travel companies. Google added flights, but Booking Holdings (aka Priceline) continued to grow each year to 15B in revenue for 2019. (Huge drop for 2020 obviously.) If I type " weather" google will show me the weather, but which weather company has shutdown because of that? Google news is in the search results, but there are a lot of news com…

I think the whole argument is setting up the presupposition that Google kills non competitive businesses, and that's not what antitrust law is about. It's about protecting consumers, not competitors.

Take Android for example. Did Google kill Blackberry with Android? Or was it other factors like the Blackberry CEO cannibalizing their R&D budget, and stubbornly refusing to give consumers what they wanted?

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

#546

Post by tyingq »

minsc__and__boo wrote: post #541
tyingq wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schmidt seems concerned they are in that territory. Also, the document I linked to, presumably written by people with deep expertise on the topic, has several relevant sections. One excerpt: === A. GOOGLE HAS MONOPOLY POWER IN RELEVANT MARKETS A firm is a monopolist if it can profitably raise prices substantially above the competitive level. [M]onopoly power may be inferred from a firm's possesion of a dominant share…

Eric Schmidt is not Google. Also, a half-redacted document written by an anonymous person that was accidentally released almost a decade ago does not change the definition of a monopoly. Yes, you can assume that it's written by someone who knows what they're talking about, just as much as you can also presume they were wrong because it was squashed. That's a moot argument. None of that changes the fact that being pop…

"popular does not make something a monopoly"

I didn't say that, though, or anything like that.

I did mention market share dominance. But that's often related to things like "A firm is a monopolist if it can profitably raise prices substantially above the competitive level.".

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

#547

Post by caslon »

cycomanic wrote: post #417
caslon wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insinuating that using Bittorrent is inherently tied to criminal activity is like suggesting the same for a person who uses a car.

He was talking about videos, that is bittorrent as an alternative to youtube. So how do you discover legal videos that interest you on bittorrent?

The same way I discover new movies: See what everyone else is checking out.

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

#548

Post by bumby »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #511
bumby wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a certain extent, utilities differ in that they are regulated monopolies protected by the government. Any competing water company, for example, can’t just start running water mains without government approval. In exchange for that protection, the existing water utility incurs additional regulations, like needing approvals to raise rates and bring required to provide services to areas where it may not be profitable…

In general by government protection we just mean that they are receiving property protection from police and from local governmental offices for like water quality inspections, park maintenance, general public services like the post office, etc, right? not that the government decides anything of note for the utility/company of people who are doing their best to run things based on merit and performance and team cohes…

It’s hard to answer completely because it varies by municipality and I’m not an expert. But the public utility commission does regulate quite a bit, potentially ranging from where a utility can build, how much renewable sources they must have, how much they can charge, etc.

In exchange, the utility can essentially be guaranteed that competitors will not be allowed to enter the market. In the past few decades, there has been more movement towards deregulated markets but not without issues. (See the documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room” if you aren’t already familiar with the story of Enron).

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

#549

Post by minsc__and__boo »

tyingq wrote: post #546
minsc__and__boo wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric Schmidt is not Google. Also, a half-redacted document written by an anonymous person that was accidentally released almost a decade ago does not change the definition of a monopoly. Yes, you can assume that it's written by someone who knows what they're talking about, just as much as you can also presume they were wrong because it was squashed. That's a moot argument. None of that changes the fact that being pop…

"popular does not make something a monopoly" I didn't say that, though, or anything like that. I did mention market share dominance. But that's often related to things like "A firm is a monopolist if it can profitably raise prices substantially above the competitive level." .

>In short, dominant market share in web search.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440321#27443928

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

#550

Post by caslon »

wernercd wrote: post #463
caslon wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisement is immoral and totally unnecessary to have a profitable business.

> advertisment is immoral Interesting opinion... have any facts to back up such an opinion? What's immoral about... spreading information about you and your business? There are immoral ways to go about advertising, without doubt. But advertising itself is immoral?

"What's immoral about... spreading information about you and your business?"

Non-consensually forcing anyone into anything is wrong. Advertising violates the NAP.

"But advertising itself is immoral?"

Indeed.

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