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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

#621

Post by jonplackett »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #131
jonplackett wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the suggestion is breaking up alphabet, which is quite literally loads of companies. YouTube, Google search, deep mind, Google fiber, waymo, Fitbit etc Seems pretty easy to break up if you want to.

The parent's point was that breaking up Alphabet in any way that leaves Google Ads contiguous is insignificant. When you go to the barbershop and get a haircut, you've broken up your person into 100,001 individual pieces, but that hasn't solved your weight loss problem, because the 100,000 bits of hair are only a few hundred micrograms each and the one piece that is your body still weighs 90 kg. Google Cloud is big e…

Isn’t the problem also that they use the massive profit in search to go into other areas and distort the market there by being able to subsidise losses with search income?

It would also stop them favouring their own products in search results

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

#622

Post by darkwater »

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…

> If I type " weather" google will show me the weather, but which weather company has shutdown because of that?

I don't know the answer to your (rethorical?) question but what I know is that weather sites and apps were once nice and useful and now are basically a placeholder for advertisement, sometimes even scammy one.

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

#623

Post by jonplackett »

gumby wrote: post #252
jonplackett wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the suggestion is breaking up alphabet, which is quite literally loads of companies. YouTube, Google search, deep mind, Google fiber, waymo, Fitbit etc Seems pretty easy to break up if you want to.

> I think the suggestion is breaking up alphabet, which is quite literally loads of companies. Few, if any of those companies would be viable on their own. They require monopoly support. For example Google Cloud loses a billion a quarter (they spent $5B last quarter total in $4B). As far as the cloud market goes there's really only one player, the profitable, pure play AWS. Everybody else is losing money, and mostly…

That’s kind of the point though isn’t it?

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

#624

Post by ben_w »

andyana wrote: post #518
Manuel_D wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You might want to rethink your bike claim; it is certainly possible.

Only as a technicality. Domestic electrical power use varies worldwide from “none” to “tens of kilowatts”. This, for example, is what it takes to run a UK household on bicycle electricity: https://youtu.be/C93cL_zDVIM

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

#625

Post by kbenson »

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…

> There's a clear tradeoff here between what's good for consumers, and concerns about democracy, the concentration of power, etc..

Actually, you can just leave it as tradeoffs between what is good for the consumer short term and what is good for the consumer long term.

Sometimes there are wider issues that affect democracy (e.g. social networks and information silos), but usually it's just an economic issue that people aren't looking at thoroughly enough.

The reason we try to stop monopolies before they happen is not because they are hurting consumers at that point. Often they are underselling competitors to achieve their monopoly so consumers benefit and love them. We stop them because after they have that monopoly they no longer have good incentives to keep being beneficial for the consumer, so we avoid the problem before it is one.

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

#627

Post by unishark »

nine_k wrote: post #603
unishark wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...most businesses your option is either have a strong search presence on Google or go out of business. Your perspective is a bit skewed here towards the software world. There are businesses on every street-corner in the US, and for that matter world, without any meaningful internet presence or need for great search engine ranking. And for that matter, consumer products and consumer-facing businesses are only a sub…

These businesses without internet presence usually still want to be shown on g.maps. OTOH maps add businesses even if the businesses don't add themselves.

That falls under what I'd call not a meaningful internet presence because it is google handing over the same info from maps and business directories.

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

#628

Post by buran77 »

themacguffinman wrote: post #553
buran77 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 los…

I appreciate the time you took to come up with the examples but I hope you can see they're not quite comparable. An email address, like a phone number, identifies you uniquely. But unlike phone numbers there's no "portability", you can't take your gmail address with you to yahoo. Losing access to your email is more akin to losing access to your name than to an appliance of sorts.

A phone or a car are nowhere near that level of uniqueness. People don't need your IMEI or VIN number to identify you. You can still have a backup of your data which for all intents and purposes will turn any other phone into the one that was taken from you. And if Hertz somehow just takes back your car full of your personal stuff you have plenty of recourse. Most other critical industries were either regulated as utilities or self regulated.

The problem is that companies like Google give you the service ostensibly for free and use this to justify being able to completely cut access to your account with absolutely no recourse and no explanation. You didn't pay anything so you can't expect anything. On the other hand they do monetize your data which invalidates the "for free" premise. They also don't give you any possibility to transfer the ownership of those uniquely identifying elements.

Perhaps any mail provider like ProtonMail or Fastmail should also be regulated as utilities. When electricity was deemed a utility it was probably used by fewer people and it was less useful to them than mail is today. At the very least companies like Google, Apple, and the rest of the bunch should be very tightly regulated.

You can use maps or youtube without an account but you will never receive that job offer without your email. And you may not be able to access your other critical accounts since they rely on email.

Let's put it another way: maybe an email provider should not be allowed to be used for critical services like banking, utilities, public services, etc. unless they themselves accept to be regulated as utilities. The point is to not have critical services relying on ones with a proven low quality of service track record.

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

#629

Post by amelius »

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…

Yes, Google is a gatekeeper, and there's no denying about it.

Fortunately, the EU has the upcoming Digital Markets Act, ensuring fair competition in the digital space. You can read more about it here:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...

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

#630

Post by krisoft »

johbjo wrote: post #616

Let's say the electric company wants to start a restaurant. So they shut the power to the competing restaurants in the neighbourhood. Everyone agrees it would be outrageous. Now, what about Apple dictating payment policy on apps in the app store? Google premiering their own services in the results? Forcing their own apps onto all Android devices, impossible to remove? These platforms turn themselves into natural mono…

How do these services turn themselves into natural monopolies? There are many non-Apple phones available. There are also non-google search engines. What makes these natural monopolies then?
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