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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

#551

Post by tyingq »

minsc__and__boo wrote: post #549
tyingq wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

The word "popular" is where?

"may be inferred from a firm's possesion of a dominant share of a relevant market that is protected by entry barriers"

Arguably I left out "protected by entry barriers", but that seems obvious for search.

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

#552

Post by minsc__and__boo »

tyingq wrote: post #551
minsc__and__boo wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In short, dominant market share in web search. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440321#27443928

The word "popular" is where? "may be inferred from a firm's possesion of a dominant share of a relevant market that is protected by entry barriers" Arguably I left out "protected by entry barriers", but that seems obvious for search.

Dominant market share is reflective of being the popular consumer choice, given the easily accessible supply of other search engines.

You're splitting hairs over the word popular now.

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

#553

Post by themacguffinman »

buran77 wrote: post #74
jolmg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, but Google holds monopoly over that email address that you've been using and passing around for years, and all the data associated to it. Losing access to it can prove to be a major issue. Of course this is nowhere near as critical as water, food, or shelter. But in the modern world losing access to your long time email address, like a phone number, will cause some pain. I see no reason not to put such a responsi…

If a monopoly over your essential email address is the motivation, then every single provider no matter the size has a monopoly over your email address. There's no reason to limit your judgement to "companies of similar size". Would you argue that ProtonMail and Fastmail and so forth are equally responsible for your email address?

Let's go further. Is Apple a public utility? If I buy an iPhone and it's painful to lose it, doesn't Apple have a monopoly over my iPhone given that they have kill switches and update privileges?

Is Hertz a public utility? If I rent a car and it becomes very painful to lose it, doesn't Hertz have a monopoly over my essential car?

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

#554

Post by fraserharris »

minsc__and__boo wrote: post #544
rgbrenner wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Research in Motion thought the Blackberry keyboard was their killer feature for business professionals. They were wrong. The iPhone killed Blackberry, not Android.

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

#555

Post by SmellTheGlove »

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…

I agree with you on how interesting the issue you raised is. I'm just cynical and I happen to think that won't be the issue that gets decided. I wonder aloud if this will boil down to a question of whether utilities can exist as services on non-utilities, given that we don't presently classify internet service as a utility.

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

#556

Post by hnick »

lupire wrote: post #502
hnick wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a content creator rich snippets are such a bugbear. If you don't play the game then someone else's content and name shows up. If you do, there's a huge chance people get what they need and never visit your site. It's a Google wins, consumer wins, creator loses situation.

Many focus on "content" that is more than one paragraph.

Many queries are relatively simple questions, and you won't get placement if you don't answer that question. And if you do, they have no need to click through. People care more about the answer than the justification. I've done it myself plenty of times.

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

#557

Post by Jcowell »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #10
Hamuko wrote: 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)?

This is the beginning of the Republican rebrand to be the people's party again, since democrats have abandoned that cause long ago. They simply seek to be the in charge political force, and they are winning, as evidenced by every major corporation seemingly overnight bending over to satisfy democratic candidates and democratic voting blocs.

Not that I want to get into politics on HN but care we seriously forgetting which party didn’t vote to pass a stimulus bill for the people a couple a months ago?

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

#558

Post by hnick »

bushbaba wrote: post #524
lupire wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many focus on "content" that is more than one paragraph.

Ugh like recipes. With the damn recipe 10 pages down. I don’t care about your grandma’s life story. I just want to know how much flour to eggs ratio for pasta dough. Incredibly annoying.

Perhaps you wouldn't have found that recipe in Google if they didn't include all that bullshit. Are you frustrated because you rarely get shown links in Google that are just the recipe, no fluff? Maybe they exist but you never get to see them.

They're playing by rules they didn't invent. The belief is this content gets indexed better than just recipes (which, when well written, are terse) and it should be placed above the recipe so it has higher priority. They might be mistaken but with the limited amount of information Google gives, and the fact that most places I stumble across on Google are doing it, I'm ready to believe it works.

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

#559

Post by smaudet »

Manuel_D wrote: post #490
russian-hacker wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is forcing you to use an electrical company. You could always power your house with a bicycle generator. Therefore, electrical companies shouldn't be regulated as public utilities.

Yes, you have to use the municipal electricity. You cannot lay your own power lines, it's illegal. And in most urban areas, you can't run your own generator for emissions restrictions. You also can't power your home with a bicycle. Even champion bicyclists output 50-100 watts. Using Bing, DuckDuckGo, or other Google alternatives are incomparably easier than not using utilities like electricity and plumbing. I struggl…

Such a tiny, piddling outlook on the world.

You can do everything with water with rain-barrels and buckets. As others have said, you can do power with candles, bike generators, and wood fire.

Is that a realistic solution in a modern society? Hell no.

I struggle to see how anyone honestly can lie to themselves that it is somehow absurd to label something a "utility" just because the technology has advanced beyond cave-man level.

Google deserves their status as a utility - monopolies, effective or otherwise, we have consistently found to be actively harmful.

Furthermore, if a company wants to be a "be-all-everything technological solution", it is actively attempting to usurp the role of government. And when that govt is un-elected, that's a despotic oligarchy, at best. We may well be forced to storm Google HQ and put every Google CEO's head on the chopping block if we want to preserve our liberty.

Or, y'know, maybe just support getting them regulated instead, bit more of a humane solution, dontcha think?

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

#560

Post by dragonwriter »

Actually, a common carrier, which is a private utility.

If they wanted Google to be a public utility, they’d have to seize or buy their assets; the former of which is prohibited by the 5th Amendment, and their ability to compel the second is absent because the relevant assets aren't within Ohio’s reach for that purpose.

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