The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
1–10 of 399 posts
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#2When someone describes search results as “unbiased” you know right there and then they fundamentally do not understand the act of searching.
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#3One of the more obvious pieces of misinformation here: ChowNow does not charge any per-order commission fee, it's right on their pricing page -- https://get.chownow.com/pricing. ChowNow is also not the only provider Google Maps works with, restaurants have options.
Did this author do any fact checking at all?
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#4Even if anticompetitive behaviour is clear, I wonder if a USA government would take action against them. Has such a thing happened before? I mean fighting a company that gaves the USA an advantage in a global market, as opposed to local monopolies.
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#5[deleted]
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#6Let's get cable internet regulated like a utility first. Then afterwards we can talk about competing services on the internet.
Anti-competitive behavior should be addressed but let's get our priorities straight.
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#7Even if anticompetitive behaviour is clear, I wonder if a USA government would take action against them. Has such a thing happened before? I mean fighting a company that gaves the USA an advantage in a global market, as opposed to local monopolies.
I think this is a reasonable take and I'm sure the government is taking into account.
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#8When someone describes search results as “unbiased” you know right there and then they fundamentally do not understand the act of searching.
I take it you refer to "Google started out as an almost benevolent index of the world wide web, showing users ten blue, unbiased links for whatever users were searching for."
Leaving aside whether it's true or not, this could be interpreted more charitably. Search results are necessarily biased to provide relevant links, based on some definition of "relevant". We can interpret "unbiased" in this context to mean that content providers cannot introduce "bad" bias (e.g. by misrepresenting their actual content, by paying for ads to indirectly boost placement, or directly paying for placement, etc.).
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#9One of the more obvious pieces of misinformation here: ChowNow does not charge any per-order commission fee, it's right on their pricing page -- https://get.chownow.com/pricing . ChowNow is also not the only provider Google Maps works with, restaurants have options. Did this author do any fact checking at all?
The minimum price to be on ChowNow is $99/mo on a 2 year plan. It's not free.
Re: The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility
#10Along with Facebook, internet and cell providers. That alone would add so much value to society.