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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at it this way. Either they do a blackout and (probably) save their entire company, or don't and lose everything. While I'm not a businessman, I'd rather take the chance of making everyone use Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yahoo/Whatever for a day rather than risk losing my entire companies main product(s).
False dichotomy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
What about large user based content sites? Wordpress and Tumblr account for millions of post/day.
The big internet companies such as Google and Facebook etc. will probably get some exception from SOPA (like they will not liable if they allow easy censoring tool for big production companies) and because of that they will be quiet.
Look, paying few million to lobbyists to exempt you from some legalization is much more efficient - and in parallel you can kill competition like duckduckgo.com
Google might be well served by some sort of partial blackout on its home page, but Facebook would need to get more creative -- and, dare I say it, more social. A blackout of any kind on Facebook would create a minor to major annoyance for an audience that we can presume is largely ignorant to apathetic about SOPA. If, instead, Facebook released profile widget of some sort -- say, a standardized black box as one's def…
And there's a valid point-of-view from which that annoyance makes sense.
Facebook altogether is hosting the content of myself and my friends - laid out using Facebook's software but still our stuff. We may all like the idea of going black that day but only if we ask.
It's as if a web host decided all of the sites it hosted would go black for a given day as a political protest. It wouldn't wash well.
Sure you can say that since people don't pay for Facebook, they can't complain. Whatever the merits of that argument, it certainly isn't how everyone would see things, especially the less Internet-savvy. Given this, it wouldn't seem like a way to convince people.
Utilities cannot "go dark". The power company couldn't go dark to make a political point. The water and gas companies couldn't either. Google has acquired (for better or worse) utility status. Interrupting service to make a political point would do unbelievable damage to Google itself. Better to just outspend Hollywood, if Google has the will to defeat SOPA.
Google has every right to suspend offering their service at anytime. The only way the government could force them to stay open would be to buy a controlling interest in the company like they did with the banks.
Utilities cannot "go dark". The power company couldn't go dark to make a political point. The water and gas companies couldn't either. Google has acquired (for better or worse) utility status. Interrupting service to make a political point would do unbelievable damage to Google itself. Better to just outspend Hollywood, if Google has the will to defeat SOPA.
In what way? I don't see how the two equate. Utilities are natural monopolies with strict regulations. They can't shut down because you couldn't just buy your power from someone else. That's not the case at all for Google. Google has every right to suspend offering their service at anytime. The only way the government could force them to stay open would be to buy a controlling interest in the company like they did wi…
Of course they have every right to go black, but I can't help but feel they'd suffer the consequence in a big way.
Not even Google can buy a reputation back.