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The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

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Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#121

Post by auganov »

CPLX wrote: post #100
auganov wrote: post #29

I love how few actual proposal there are out there as to what the government should actually do. That is - not just "regulate" or "break them up". I'm talking specifics. Once you start making concrete proposals it becomes increasingly obvious just how hard it is to come up with something that won't make everything worse.

The proposal of what to do is for the Justice Department to sue them for antitrust violations and for the courts to break up the divisions of the company that engage in unlawful anticompetitive behavior. Not only is it plausible we saw it done with Microsoft, and the result was an explosion of entrepreneurship and innovation in the relevant markets, which were software and internet services.

No, Microsoft was never broken up. That was the initial judgment. The case ended in a settlement [0] which didn't require all that much from Microsoft. The obligations have now long expired.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/file/503541/downlo...

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#122

Post by shadowgovt »

Aunche wrote: post #107
shadowgovt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, perhaps agreement from these two segments of government indicates that Google is serving public interest as a viable counterweight to the force of government itself?

They don't agree. The left uses Steven Crowder not being banned from Youtube as an example of conservative bias. The right claims Steven Crowder being demonetized is evidence of liberal bias. Right now Google has a profit motive to remain neutral. The fewer people they alienate, the more money they make. It's not perfect, but politicians have very little incentive to keep Google neutral.

They agree that their respective special interests aren't being served. And they're right. Because Google is not in the business of kowtowing to liberal or conservative political interests.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#123

Post by supernova87a »

The question I have about public policy in this realm is, "when does something become a service the public has a certain entitlement to?"

Because, if I think about how long Google has been around (and been popular), this is on the order of 15 years. You might even say just 10 years in terms of when it became widely used. That's the blink of an eye in government terms.

If I were to be Google, I might ask, "where do you have the gall to take what we built from scratch, that you didn't even know about 10 years ago, and demand that it serve the public in the way that you want?"

On the other hand, the societal good in me says, "you've affected and changed the world to something new, policies need to take that into account".

I guess, if Google had chosen to be a pay-for-service, private club that only certain people could use, then they wouldn't be in this situation. You make something private enough, and it'll never be so big as to attract attention. But then they wouldn't be worth like $1T.

I guess, when do we have the right to demand that something turn into a public utility? Or that it has changed to effectively become one?

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#124

Post by pb7 »

topicseed wrote: post #104
pb7 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this any different from putting up a billboard next to a restaurant for a competing restaurant?

It is, because it is not always perceived as an Ad. Looks like a duck, talks like a duck, and Google has it #1, so it must be my duck. So in principle, you're right, but in my opinion, it's a lot more powerful than a billboard (clear ad) next to a real storefront.

That's the cost of directing customers to your website even if they misspell your brand name or don't remember if you're a .com or .net or many other things. After all, if they knew to go to topicseed.com, why didn't they type that URL in and go directly there? I certainly don't search for Hacker News or Apple.com or Twitter on Google each time I go there, do you?

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#125

Post by hinkley »

ALittleLight wrote: post #11

One Google quirk I've been thinking about lately is the times when you search for something and the thing you want is the top advertised and organic result. Seems like a waste of money. An example, if you search for "heroku" then you get an ad for heroku, which, yeah, is what I was searching for, but heroku is also the top result and obviously what I was looking for. Heroku is paying Google to provide Google with the…

I don’t recall which, but I searched for a brand name recently and their web site was number five or six. Pinterest was higher, which drives me nuts.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#126

Post by kazinator »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #115
chrisco255 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the same government that couldn't get a healthcare website going is supposed to also power every single transaction from internal infrastructure. There are hidden costs that are much higher than 3% to giving the government full control over every transaction in society. It's a single point of failure with no redundancy or decentralization, a large attack vector, and a human rights nightmare. As a general rule,…

The Federal gov't is vast and is not uniformly ineffective. Even within departments tech performance can vary greatly.

> not uniformly ineffective

Ha, that's a good phrase to use in a performance review.

"On the whole, Bob is not uniformly ineffective ..."

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#127

Post by jrockway »

elicash wrote: post #106
chrisco255 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the same government that couldn't get a healthcare website going is supposed to also power every single transaction from internal infrastructure. There are hidden costs that are much higher than 3% to giving the government full control over every transaction in society. It's a single point of failure with no redundancy or decentralization, a large attack vector, and a human rights nightmare. As a general rule,…

I mean, government does GPS. Sends folks to space. You mention SpaceX, but let's not pretend NASA doesn't exist. Yeah, there was once that website that had a bad launch, but there's nothing inherent in government that wouldn't allow this to work well. I do think ideally this could be done by NY or CA first. We should test out ideas in the states, where possible.

GPS is a lot less stateful than real-time financial transaction processing. It takes time corrections from base stations and broadcasts a time signal. End users have no way of mutating state on the GPS satellite; they only listen.

I'm not saying it's easy to make a global positioning system, but it's easier than processing every transaction in the United States.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#128

Post by schalab »

auganov wrote: post #29

I love how few actual proposal there are out there as to what the government should actually do. That is - not just "regulate" or "break them up". I'm talking specifics. Once you start making concrete proposals it becomes increasingly obvious just how hard it is to come up with something that won't make everything worse.

Imagine if the internet was started by one corporation.

Instead, the internet is an open source set of protocols.

The answer lies in converting companies which abuse becoming the standard due to network effect, to an open source set of protocols.

Maybe give them a period of 10-20 years to profit. Then they have to expose a public set of standards and protocols which can be used by everyone else.

For instance microsoft windows after 15 years, would be forced to release a freeware version of code, which contained all functionality they had at that time.

Other companies and users could build on this code and thus microsoft are no longer the standard. Just a version of it.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#129

Post by stickfigure »

shakna wrote: post #87
sjroot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. Every device that I can think of allows you to choose a default search engine. It would be very easy for me to use something other than Google; they have no anticompetitive hold on how I explore the Internet and discover new services. This article is written by someone who would personally profit from Google’s regulation. It’s an ad for his company disguised as virtue signaling.

> Every device that I can think of allows you to choose a default search engine. Users, overwhelming, do not change defaults. Period. Unless there is a step where they are shown a range of options and select one, this is not an active choice for them.

Citizens (at least in the US), overwhelmingly, don't vote. But that doesn't mean this isn't a democracy.

Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility

#130

Post by elliekelly »

tempsy wrote: post #91
patmorgan23 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACH and Wire transfers exist. Also the Fed is developing a new instant payments system that will be launched in a few years.

yes i know that. are we going to back to the days where I pay for my groceries by writing a check? you can’t possibly be arguing that ACH and wire transfers make sense for everyday purchases.

Why wouldn’t ACH make sense for everyday purchases?
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