Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

dispatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 748 posts

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

#581

Post by yxhuvud »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #573
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve used a number of those others, and at least via my personal scoring system, google flights is still by far the number one. Your link prioritizes very different things than I do, for example one of its top scoring sites has as a con that you can’t filter out 10+ hour layovers).

"We also ignored any itinerary that would be hell to fly-basically anything increasing total travel time by more than half through excessively long layovers, too many stops, or flying way out of your way just to change planes. Airlines may think that makes for a viable plan, but we don't." Am I reading this wrong or does this indicate Frommer also prioritises avoiding long layovers. (I dislike the inclusion of the lo…

If nothing else they need to exist due to rare destinations with few planes going to them, together with having to fly to those airports.

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

#582

Post by [deleted] »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #579
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, Google Flight Search is not even close to the best alternative.1 https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-w... This is interesting because I always thought Matrix from ITA Software, a company Google acquired in 2010, was quite useful. Wonder if links to Skiplagged get subjugated in Google SERPs. If Google thinks it can replace other websites by providing better alternatives, that's great…

>” The index should be a public resource not controlled by one company that can see what users are searching for and engage in "front-running".” The thing is, it’s the index they built with the technology they built. Google is not the only index. To build a public index, you’d need to have public crawlers, which would bring a whole boatload more questions / regulation / debate. Google’s search ranking is part of the…

[deleted]

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

#583

Post by ksec »

fraserharris wrote: post #554
minsc__and__boo wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I tend to think it was Blackberry killed Blackberry, not Android or iPhone. Not willing to change and adapt is the recipe for disaster in tech industry. I am not aware of any other industry that moves as fast and at such scale where the whole industry shift.

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

#584

Post by blntechie »

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…

Same with sports scores. I’m surprised the various sports websites have not made a cry about this as part of anti-trust investigations. Maybe because those sports sites are still reliant on Google for their other page views? Which only makes it worse.

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

#585

Post by DubiousPusher »

Sincere question, are most utilities even treated as public utilities in Ohio? When I was a kid in Montana, the very popular statewide public power utility was deregulated by conservatives and it ceased to operate in the public interest at all. It was quickly replaced by even less scrupulous businesses after it bankrupt itself pursing telecom.

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

#586

Post by gnopgnip »

Aunche wrote: post #25

While Google is functionally a public utility, it's not something that I want to be regulated like a public utility. If the government can't be trusted to law lines on a map that aren't blatantly rigged to favor their own political party, I can't trust that they won't tamper with search results the same way.

So trusting a private company that doesn't answer to the public at all is better than trusting elected officials that favor the incumbents?

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

#587

Post by ksec »

codelord wrote: post #466
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…

On the one hand it seems Google is unstoppable. Google can do everything. But I think iPhone showed an alternative path. Now most people are actually using apps (not Google) on mobile for different functionalities. I guess this is the argument that Google has been making but I buy that. My guess is 20 years from now Android, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. would be more valuable for Google than search.

>Google is unstoppable.

Google having to pay $10-$12B a year to Apple just for being default search engine. All while Apple is working on stopping cookies and now VPN that takes away all the information Google could use for Ads. And Siri Search being Apple's default recommendation results means most of the valuable ads search term revenue are now out of reach for Google. That is ~1.4B Apple Active Devices. ( Apple TV or other Appliance being counted or not is a rounding error ) and Growing.

If App Store spendings are any indication Apple user tends to spend twice as much than Google Play.

Basically Apple is squeezing Google left and right. ( Incidentally they are also what they are doing it to suppliers and developers )

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

#588

Post by ping_pong »

bananabreakfast wrote: post #91
aetherson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google controls the vast majority of the web search market. More than 90%. What exactly a monopoly constitutes is something that people can disagree about, but "has 90% market share" is not by any means a crazy definition of a monopoly.

But market share of what? No one pays for web search so that's not really a market. Facebook has 90%+ market share of social media. Do they have a monopoly? GitHub has a 90%+ market share of open source code hosting. Do they have a monopoly?

If a business gets deindexed by Google or its search ranking drops, their income plummets. It's pretty obvious they are a monopoly and have monopolistic power.

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

#589

Post by ping_pong »

minsc__and__boo wrote: post #531
lottin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is not a monopoly, but it has enough market power to be a reason for concern.

Anti trust laws are written to protect consumers, not inferior competitors.

Yes. And Google is engaging in monopolistic behavior by getting rid of any semblance of customer service. This is a direct result of their monopoly because businesses and customers have no viable alternative. So they can save billions by cutting customer support to near zero. That's the same as raising prices with impunity.

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

#590

Post by minsc__and__boo »

ping_pong wrote: post #589
minsc__and__boo wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti trust laws are written to protect consumers, not inferior competitors.

Yes. And Google is engaging in monopolistic behavior by getting rid of any semblance of customer service. This is a direct result of their monopoly because businesses and customers have no viable alternative. So they can save billions by cutting customer support to near zero. That's the same as raising prices with impunity.

Poor customer service is not monopolistic behavior.

If consumers preferred a search engine with good customer service, they would use the search engine with better customer service instead.

Post reply on HN