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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

#711

Post by Frondo »

bushbaba wrote: post #524
lupire wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many focus on "content" that is more than one paragraph.

Ugh like recipes. With the damn recipe 10 pages down. I don’t care about your grandma’s life story. I just want to know how much flour to eggs ratio for pasta dough. Incredibly annoying.

I dislike the content-spamming recipes for another reason -- they're an accessibility nightmare. I seem to get eye strain more easily than most, despite having normal vision when my eyes aren't hurting, so I use the screen reader a lot.

Any of those recipe sites? they'll read through several minutes of navigations, links, ads, and story before getting to the site. I feel badly for anyone who must listen to that, i.e. who doesn't have an option to read it visually, what a horrible experience.

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

#712

Post by Jcowell »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #690
Jcowell wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I want to get into politics on HN but care we seriously forgetting which party didn’t vote to pass a stimulus bill for the people a couple a months ago?

Also not to get into politics, but this one is near to me -- Is anyone in our ___ing government ever going to actually care about this insane debt we've accumulated? Do you know how long HN made fun of Uber for burning through investor cash? What about our Government? Are they beyond critique? What's wrong with not passing a stimulus bill? It was the correct move in my opinion. What in god's green earth are we doing…

I feel like this highlights a disparity between the users on Hacker News and the common people. For the majority of us , our work was easily transferable online or we we’re (for the most part) essential workers. This was not true for a good chunk of Americans who struggle to make ends meet and lived in states were unemployment benefits were so inaccessible that people had to write their state politicians to push the backlog along. For people like this the stimulus and other just as important things were crucial to their survival.

What’s an absolute joke is that the Richest Country on this planet showed the most embarrassing display of helping it’s citizens while our neighbor up above was able to. I cannot see the how states on their own would be able to help their citizens when they have no ability to print money. This was absolutely the role of the federal government and it botched it in the most insane way possible.

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

#714

Post by wyager »

whimsicalism wrote: post #698
wyager wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is more effectively constrained than, say, the US federal government.

Google is effectively unconstrained, so hard to see how that could possibly be the case. Sure, the government has more power, but it is also more constrained. There is no public control of Google, it is not a publicly sanctioned power.

> Google is effectively unconstrained

Google is many orders of magnitude less likely to kill someone (legally or extralegally) or seize their assets than US government.

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

#715

Post by o8r3oFTZPE »

thebeardisred wrote: post #704
o8r3oFTZPE wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Google did not develop flight search but acquired it by buying someone out. What if they did not develop image search but acquired it by buying someone out. What if they did not develop the good-looking timer but copied it from someone else. If Google was 100% responsible for developing everything they offer to consumers, then perhaps there is an argument that Google is good for consumers. However the truth i…

I'm not quite following if this is sarcastic or not. For example, Google did acquire flight search: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software

Not meant to be sarcastic. A single, web-based company could offer wonderful coveniences for web users if 1. they know what "all" people are searching for on the web 2. they are enabled (by finance) and allowed (by law) to acquire any other company that aims to serve the needs of "all" people searching for stuff on the web. #1 is a capability held by no other company on the planet, except Google. The point is that a single, all-knowing company offering such wonderful conveniences is not necessary responsible for creating them. First, they had to 1. spy on peoples' searches to determine what stuff people were looking for on the web and 2. acquire other companies that had already worked out how to best provide that stuff. If the all-knowing company did not exist, the other companies providing the stuff that people were searching for would still exist. The all-knowing company is initially just a middleman. In some cases this middleman has not been content to simply connect people with the companies providing the stuff and take a cut (through selling advertising services). Rather, the middleman seeks to acquire the companies and provide the stuff itself (enhancing its spying capabilities).

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

#716

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

Backing up just a bit, what right does a state have to declare a web application a public utility? The jibber jabber about how Google might affect Ohio businesses seems just a distraction from the basic issue. A public utility is generally a business within the state that delivers essential services, like water and power, to areas in which there is no reasonable alternative, i.e., as local monopolies. If the internet itself is not considered a public utility - and indeed companies like Comcast and AT&T that deliver the internet as mostly local monopolies are not regulated as public utilities - how can a mere application on the web be considered a public utility? Even if it were, this would seem to be a matter for federal, not state, jurisdiction. The lawsuit seems more a publicity stunt than a serious action.

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

#717

Post by themacguffinman »

buran77 wrote: post #628
themacguffinman wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

I wasn't talking about a phone number or IMEI or VIN, I was talking about an iPhone. An iPhone can identity me if I setup iMessage, which is based on a phone number but effectively takes it over so that Apple receives all texts sent by other iPhone users on my behalf until I unregister it in some way. It's a common complaint that just switching to an Android phone can result in lost messages and is a notable switching cost.

People use my address to identify me too. Does that make my rented home a public utility? I can't take my home address with me. I guess my landlord should be forced by law to renew my lease indefinitely otherwise I'll lose my geographical name.

> 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.

Of course you can receive job offers without a specific email. You can update your job seeking profile and inform companies you've applied to of a new email. It's also entirely up to you to share additional forms of contact like a phone number when you apply.

Any account critical enough to be considered a public utility like banking, utilities, public services, etc won't be solely based on email and will have non-email recovery mechanisms, usually based on your actual identity.

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

#718

Post by onethought »

shkkmo wrote: post #691
onethought wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not obfuscation, if you are concerned about privacy. You can completely hide your usage patterns with a battery or solar/wind generation. Are you honesty making the point that: knowing you used 5 units of power in 1 month (where someone has to walk onto your property and read a number, as is the case in most dumb metered scenarios) is less of a privacy concern than knowing you used .3 of unit of power in the las…

> knowing you used 5 units of power in 1 month (where someone has to walk onto your property and read a number, as is the case in most dumb metered scenarios) is less of a privacy concern than knowing you used .3 of unit of power in the last 15 minutes (without needing to walk onto your property). Personally, I think so for most people. But that depends on how much privacy your property provides from pedestrians and…

no, it’s always worth pointing out irrational reasoning though.

There are clear benefits to real-time monitoring of power. So far I’ve only heard made up, theoretical, what if, privacy concerns.

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

#719

Post by dalmo3 »

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #681
rgbrenner wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to 15B in revenue for 2019. (Huge drop for 2020 obviously.) But did advertising on Google become more expensive for competitors once Google entered the market (e.g. did Google Flights also bid on Google Ads) and were those additional costs passed along to customers? So while your example shows a competitor survived, it over looks…

> over looks the increased costs to consumers

Google flights takes you straight to the airlines websites. No intermediaries. How's that increasing costs to consumers?

Do third party booking sites usually offer lower prices than the airlines themselves? I've seen it happen but very rarely.

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

#720

Post by solaceb »

cbolton wrote: post #668
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…

This analogy seems way off to me. It completely misses the fact that Google is doing what it's supposed to do which is giving the user the information they're looking for. I don't think cutting power is giving the customer (restaurants) or users (not clear in the analogy) what they want. It's true that with flight search, competitor results are de-emphasized, but as far as I'm concerned Google could even drop them en…

>It's true that with flight search, competitor results are de-emphasized,

In what sense is Google a competitor with flight/travel businesses?

Google is an advertising company.

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