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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

#641

Post by silasdavis »

ben_w wrote: post #620
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…

They have the capacity to be bad, but for example Apple (who are in a similar place WRT this) started with apps you can’t remove and has now made most of them removable; and last time I looked (a while ago now) many unremovable Android apps came from the phone vendor. I’m all in favour of keeping companies under a close eye to make sure they don’t become an abusive monopoly — my naïve political philosophy is that pow…

> If they can easily become a natural monopoly, decentralisation won’t solve anything in the long term.

I don't follow the reasoning here.

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

#642

Post by greyman »

unishark wrote: post #516
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 other hand, google could take over almost any business like this. I have never worked with a technology company that would in danger of being taken over in this way. The examples you list are all free information you can find on the internet, which is precisely google's business. To run afoul of monopoly laws they need to do things like build their own restaurants and route searches to them rather than the o…

>grabbing free info anyone can get

Yes, that's true, the info is free in a sense that someone published it on the internet. But taking the weather companies as an example, someone has to measure the weather, and then compute the predictions. That'a real cost someone needs to pay. And that I think is the reason some people don't like what Google is doing - they are displaying the temperature, while someone else paid for it to be measured.

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

#643

Post by Broken_Hippo »

satellite2 wrote: post #113
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.

Try finding a smartphone under 250$, try advertising any small business on the internet, try avoiding meets meeting when you apply for a job

Used phones exist, and even more are out there if you are willing to do things like replace a screen at home.

Facebook and instagram exist for advertising: Small businesses aren't going to get much traction on google anyway without specific searches for it, though android is finally catching up and I now get local places in game adverts.

Do a different job.

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

#644

Post by arnvald »

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…

> Google added flights, but Booking Holdings (aka Priceline) continued to grow each year

OTAs keep growing, because travel in general keeps growing. But Google takes more and more space there. Right now the "book now" button on Google hotel page takes you to selection of OTAs. But one day it can take you to Google's room selection page and eventually to Google's checkout page - the actual booking can still be done with some external party and they'll handle the customer service etc., but your money will go to Google first.

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

#645

Post by tremon »

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.

I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products

I am pretty sure that number is close to zero. googleapis.com is a Google product, and not using it breaks half the Internet. Trust me, I've tried.

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

#646

Post by uuuooobbb »

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…

Google travel search features have a big impact on travel search sites such as expedia and tripadvisor.

https://skift.com/2019/11/07/googles-travel-gains-levy-pain-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/12/06/how-...

I remember reading a comparison on how the hotel search features impacted others vs booking.com and the conclusion was that booking.com has alright because it's more of a destination of its' own rather than driven by search traffic.

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

#647

Post by tremon »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #591
Guidii wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to know which profitable companies never advertise.

Tesla, Huy Fong Foods (Sriracha), Costco, Krispy Kreme, Kiehl’s, Spanx, Rolls-Royce, and Zara are some examples.

I wouldn't add Tesla in there, its CEO is an audiovisual billboard by itself.

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

#648

Post by Dah00n »

krisoft wrote: post #630
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?

I'm not GP but a monopoly doesn't mean "we own the market everywhere" or "we have close to 100% of the market-share". We have this same discussion every time someone says monopoly..

Apple for example is a 100% monopoly in the app store. Likewise Google can be a monopoly on their search result page. It would have sounded insane some years back but today, when google search is a gatekeeper (like Facebook), they absolutely can.

You use the example of there being many non-Apple phones (while strictly true there are really only two players, iOS and Android). Can Apple use their power to kill your new innovative Fitness-From-Home app? They are absolutely in a position to do so. There's really not much else to it than that. Can Google strangle travel planner sites by showing flight plans in Google search results? Yes they can and a court would likely see this as abuse of a monopoly no matter if Google have 70% or 99% of the search engine market.

Or use the grandma test: Can you sell your Travel Planner Service to Grandma if Google starts adding the same info to Google search for "free"? Can you sell her a Fitness App for her iPhone if Apple shuts you out because they are going to launch their own iClone fitness app?

If Google goes from Search to Search/travel planner/hotel reservation/translator/and so on they are (ab)using their power to move into other areas and by shutting out competition they get more users thereby becoming a natural monopoly.

And as always happens when "The M" word is used and someone explains something we will have replies yelling Apple's AppStore isn't a monopoly, you can just use Android and we go around in circles.

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

#649

Post by simonh »

greyman wrote: post #642
unishark wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, google could take over almost any business like this. I have never worked with a technology company that would in danger of being taken over in this way. The examples you list are all free information you can find on the internet, which is precisely google's business. To run afoul of monopoly laws they need to do things like build their own restaurants and route searches to them rather than the o…

>grabbing free info anyone can get Yes, that's true, the info is free in a sense that someone published it on the internet. But taking the weather companies as an example, someone has to measure the weather, and then compute the predictions. That'a real cost someone needs to pay. And that I think is the reason some people don't like what Google is doing - they are displaying the temperature, while someone else paid f…

Google Search weather data is provided by weather.com in a commercial relationship with Google, so either Google is paying for the data like everyone else, or weather.com is providing it at their cost for their own reasons.

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

#650

Post by ben_w »

silasdavis wrote: post #641
ben_w wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have the capacity to be bad, but for example Apple (who are in a similar place WRT this) started with apps you can’t remove and has now made most of them removable; and last time I looked (a while ago now) many unremovable Android apps came from the phone vendor. I’m all in favour of keeping companies under a close eye to make sure they don’t become an abusive monopoly — my naïve political philosophy is that pow…

> If they can easily become a natural monopoly, decentralisation won’t solve anything in the long term. I don't follow the reasoning here.

Saying something is naturally a monopoly is equivalent to saying it’s naturally not decentralised. They’re opposites.
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