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's skyline, before you see links to other image search sites.
Same is true for a lot other stuff. If you search "timer", you'll see a timer, not links to various timers that look ugly as shit.
As a consumer, I love it. So much easier.
On the other hand, google could take over almost any business like this. At least, any business that is "functional" in the sense that the only thing you really want is to get some output based on your input.
There's a clear tradeoff here between what's good for consumers, and concerns about democracy, the concentration of power, etc.. And also innovation. Why start a new company, if google can just take over everything?
There are only two clear, non-arbitrary rules: Search engines are only allowed to show a list of links, or search engines can show whatever they want.
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 "<city> 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 companies. Those info panels often come from wikipedia, but wikipedia is doing great.
This is something that sounds true, but I'm having trouble thinking of an example where it has actually happened. Examples appreciated.
This is interesting because I always thought Matrix from ITA Software, a company Google acquired in 2010, was quite useful.
Wonder if links to Skiplagged get subjugated in Google SERPs.
If Google thinks it can replace other websites by providing better alternatives, that's great. But then the company should get out of the way and let users have a neutral source for a comprehensive inverted index of the rest of the web. If there is nothing else better out there, then let web users determine that for themselves. The index should be a public resource not controlled by one company that can see what users are searching for and engage in "front-running". (Websites that allow crawls by Googlebot, sometimes exclusively, are of course enabling the Google monopoly.)
1. Google bought Frommers in 2012 and nearly killed it. Thankfully the founder reacquired the rights.
> 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 other local restaurants the user was looking for. I assume they are doing this in some cases. But the last thing I want is to do a search and find the result list giving a bunch of new pages of lists, with yet more ads of course, to sift through next.
Software engineers are enjoying a nice run, where one can make lots of money applying basic software skills anyone can learn, grabbing free info anyone can get, and utilizing libraries everyone gets with their computer/phone OS but has not been provided access to by their hardware vendor. Hopefully technology will keep changing so fast the run will last forever (as long as you keep hopping to the newest bleeding edge). But this seems like borrowed time to me, access to free info and your own computer's clock or whatever is a commodity anyone can provide, whether it's someone earlier in the chain selling the hardware, or just millions of hungry programmers in developing countries.
> When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin's skyline, before you see links to other image search sites.
Not to defend Google, but to be fair,
1) when searching for images, you're searching for images, not "image search sites." To search for image search sites, you'd search "all" (not photos) for "image search," which mostly returns Google image search and Google image search help pages as top results, burying other image search engines on subsequent pages. Google's search algorithm does seem biased against competitor image search sites, but maybe Google search is really finding only articles. Searching "all" for "image search sites" returns links to articles listing image search sites. Searching for Yahoo images returns Yahoo Image Search as the top result.
2) the images search results are actually thumbnails, and also links, so you see the thumbs precisely at the same time that you see links to the sites that host each image search result.
> There are only two clear, non-arbitrary rules: Search engines are only allowed to show a list of links, or search engines can show whatever they want.
I want companies to be able to design products that best serve customers, not ones limited by narrowly scoped product definitions. Google's search page has advanced beyond query + results, offering interactivity and shortcuts. I'm not saying we shouldn't be vigilant if they start abusing their position and dominating too many markets, but let's take that case by case.
I also disagree that Google can simply take over other businesses so easily. They've failed so many times. You'd think Youtube Music would dominate, but Spotify is still more popular. YouTube TV? I cancelled that a while ago. What am I surprised about is that we don't have a really strong YouTube competitor. Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram have made some in-roads, but nothing I'd call a strong #2.
I don't see any problem with having arbitrary rules so long as they roughly capture the spirit of the outcome people want. The eight-hour workday is an arbitrary rule. The age of majority is an arbitrary rule. Zoning boundaries are arbitrary.
They all capture something we (most of us) fundamentally want, but the specific lines are approximate or convenient or customary.
> There are only two clear, non-arbitrary rules: Search engines are only allowed to show a list of links, or search engines can show whatever they want.
Those rules are just as arbitrary as all the possibilities in between.
> There's a clear tradeoff here between what's good for consumers, and concerns about democracy, the concentration of power, etc..
Actually, you can just leave it as tradeoffs between what is good for the consumer short term and what is good for the consumer long term.
Sometimes there are wider issues that affect democracy (e.g. social networks and information silos), but usually it's just an economic issue that people aren't looking at thoroughly enough.
The reason we try to stop monopolies before they happen is not because they are hurting consumers at that point. Often they are underselling competitors to achieve their monopoly so consumers benefit and love them. We stop them because after they have that monopoly they no longer have good incentives to keep being beneficial for the consumer, so we avoid the problem before it is one.
The funny part is that the flight search portion comes from their acquisition of ITA, which I was a part of (worked at ITA when it was acquired). The airlines contract with that system for their own internal search - so who is the real customer there?
As a content creator rich snippets are such a bugbear. If you don't play the game then someone else's content and name shows up. If you do, there's a huge chance people get what they need and never visit your site. It's a Google wins, consumer wins, creator loses situation.
> Why start a new company, if google can just take over everything?
It seems more and more common these days that people start companies specifically with the sole intention of being acquired by Google (or another large tech company).
Regardless of legal aspects it's hard to ignore that Google is now very much in the business of putting to sleep innovative products. Either they acquire the startup and no longer invest in it, or drive it out of the search results, or invent it first in their "moonshot" division and file patents with no intention of executing on them. (Note that the innovators themselves may not fare badly if they get acquired and/or employed by Google. But their product will at best stagnate, at worst be killed shortly.)
In the last decade Google has no longer brought to the consumer anything major like Gmail, Google Maps or Chrome. I doubt it's because of inability to execute - they can and will hire large numbers of very smart people. It seems more like a conscious decision to err on the side of maintaining the ~2010 status quo.
Crucially, I went to Googles business first to look for things.
In the olden days, if I went to AAA for travel advice, I'd get their partners and such recommended, not generic all-encompassing information. But I went to AAA for it. I don' see how this is any different. I can chose to go to not-google and Google then doesn't impact me.
Does Walmart have to put anybody's stuff where they want in the aisles?
On the one hand it seems Google is unstoppable. Google can do everything. But I think iPhone showed an alternative path. Now most people are actually using apps (not Google) on mobile for different functionalities. I guess this is the argument that Google has been making but I buy that. My guess is 20 years from now Android, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. would be more valuable for Google than search.
That's known as "tying" - an illegal use of a overwhelming market position to leverage the market position of other products of the same company. That's the key thing that determines illegal monopolistic practice.
> Why start a new company, if google can just take over everything?
If your company is defeated by Google turning it into some widget then you don’t have much of a business, you just have a feature you monetized and isn’t really a long term source of revenue. You need rigorous innovation and a clear advantage over your competitors.
Same with sports scores. I’m surprised the various sports websites have not made a cry about this as part of anti-trust investigations. Maybe because those sports sites are still reliant on Google for their other page views? Which only makes it worse.
False dichotomy; when it comes to flights, they could show general information with links to flight companies. When it comes to images, they could limit themselves to small image previews / thumbnails.
Of course, one reason why I for one prefer to stay on Google Images (and have an addon to go directly to an image file instead of the site it's on) is that the sites themselves have so much cruft on them. And they kinda have to, because there's no money to be made on a minimalist image hosting site, while there's plenty of expenses - wouldn't be surprised if the brunt of expenses is abuse prevention.
Those are great examples of how a search engine works better at offering some services than any web site that might be surfaced by the results. It's more useful, more ... utilitarian one might say. That to me is why this lawsuit to declare google a utility is most interesting. Like electricity or natural gas these useful widgets turn a search engine into a substrate that people don't even realize they're using until it breaks.
> There are only two clear, non-arbitrary rules: Search engines are only allowed to show a list of links, or search engines can show whatever they want.
Ohio is asking for a third option; common carrier status. Search and other monopoly infrastructure would be run at arms length from the rest of the business, and anyone could pay (the same as google) to integrate it into their own offerings.
Luckily, search results are getting progressively worse, and these "value add" features also. Maybe there's a time for a web 2.0 (or, 3.0?) that can integrate APIs without HTML/markup specific to do so?
I really just want to send out a query to various search caches, and get back results that are then merged into one dataset and shown in a native GUI. Forget this website shit.
I agree with you on how interesting the issue you raised is. I'm just cynical and I happen to think that won't be the issue that gets decided. I wonder aloud if this will boil down to a question of whether utilities can exist as services on non-utilities, given that we don't presently classify internet service as a utility.
I think that some other example is needed to explain "As a consumer, I love it. So much easier."
Please watch this, it is about not well known company called Luxottica that holds majority of world market for eyewear. There is a good posibilty that if you have sun glasses, they made them. It is not something technical, just simple merchandise, simple to understand:
Since the video came out, they have also bought (actually "merged") one of the largest companies creating perscription lenses.
Now, do you like what you see? Is it "so easy" and "good" for the customers? Do you love it? How is their status impacting you wanting to buy eyewear?
Same is with google, amazon, microsoft, just name it. But yes, until they get a vast majority of market, they will not start to milk the users. As they want majority of market first.
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 is that Google Search is what they developed, it became the only search engine that most people use, and being a gateway tot he web and having the ability to spy on the world's web use is an unfair advantage that virtually no one else has.
Anything that becomes popular Google can gobble it up. Consumers cannot get superior direct benefits from non-Google companies for long. Google will acquire any such companies sooner than later.
My initial thinking behind any business idea was more often than not preceded by "what if Google clones my idea???!?!? :((((". Two things wrong with this line of thinking.
First it assumes Google can execute on said idea better than me and that I can't innovate. Here's the thing though; the bigger a company is the slower it gets. Sure, they can implement processes but big always gets more complex. Being small gives you an edge. What you do with that edge will determine whether FAANG apes your idea or not.
Secondly, big tech isn't immune to market forces. The more features they add, trying to please every last potential user leads to bloat. At some point their search experience is bound to get degraded from adding way too many features in pursuit of every last user. This adds more bureaucracy. More tech debt. More uncontrollable variables.
Search in 2021, especially on mobile, is vastly different from even 5 years ago. There are more ads, more tracking, more fraud, more shady back dealing, more user hostile anti-patterns. Yes, users currently enjoy their product but at some point surveillance capitalism will get its reckoning (see Apple, Europe, regulation in general) and for all the various products they have, search is the only relevant one. Without Search, how 'threatening' is Google really?
Same goes for Facebook and that hot mess of an app. News feed, groups, pages, dating, marketplace, messaging, watch, etc. All this reeks of a co. that's lost focus in pursuit of not ceding users to competitors. This just means when they fail (which they will!), they will fail spectacularly.
My advice to you and myself is focus on a niche. Try to do things that will be hard for FAANG to reproduce by making your users love your product more.
Competing head on with these behemoths is foolish, but a moat is possible nonetheless given proper execution.
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.
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 monopolies, and therefore they can not be treated as "private companies". Decentralisation would be a technical solution, but meanwhile I think regulation is what will happen.
Well, a public utility also doesn't have the right to do this: "You did something wrong, we won't tell you what it was, there's no chance of appeal, and you are now banned from receiving water service again, ever, for the rest of your life, no matter where you move. And don't try moving in with someone else who's still receiving service, because they'll get banned too."
Hm. Here's Ohio's definition of a public utility.[1] It might be argued that Google is a telephone company or a messenger company, but that's a stretch.
Regulating Google as a common carrier would make more sense. Common carriers (which, by the way, UPS and FedEx are not, but Union Pacific is) are required to accept and deliver cargoes for anybody who ship according to their posted rates and terms.
While Google is functionally a public utility, it's not something that I want to be regulated like a public utility. If the government can't be trusted to law lines on a map that aren't blatantly rigged to favor their own political party, I can't trust that they won't tamper with search results the same way.
A big problem with software and people who write software (often) is that software doesn't like all the ways that human beings misbehave, change their minds, don't have immutable states, and don't fit into the categories you build for them.
So any system that has a duty to serve everyone eventually ends up with an operational component that has almost as much human interaction and problem solving required as the software side of it. Or the software has to be really smart or complex.
Tech companies don't like that because that increases a lot of costs. For some companies, they manage to convince their users to behave well enough to fit into the box. Other companies have to reduce their profits, or go kicking and screaming down the path of accepting the cost of business.
Example: Public electric company wants to switch people to smart meters to reduce the cost of going to read every meter, more reliable operation, easier billing, turn on/shut off, etc. Reduce the number of legacy billing systems. People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Now utility needs to maintain 2 systems, and an exception list of people who don't want the smart meter system, and still have to run trucks and meter readers, and procedures for people with old meters.
If something is to be declared a utility, the tech company had better gulp in fear of what's required. But we better as well, if we're thinking of wanting our software to be turned into something that involves those obligations and costs too. There's a reason that Google (well, maybe other tech companies) bring you new things, and the electric company doesn't. It's not all roses.
So Republicans have completely flipped on the sovereignity of private companies?
Or is this just posturing to please the number one of the GOP (Dave Yost filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of invalidating 2020 votes in Pennsylvania)?
> the lawsuit seeks a legal declaration that Google is a "common carrier," like phone, gas and electric companies, which must provide its services to anyone willing to pay its fee.
How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?
How exactly is Google.com different from a phone book in 1990? Phone books, to my knowledge, were not prohibited from advertising Southwestern Bell or Ameritech junk at the beginning, they were just incentivized not to do so because selling ads was more profitable.
The status of Google, and additionally AWS and Azure, is feeling very reminiscent of the early days of electricity companies, and the early days of (in UK at least) telco. Bit by bit the world is realising that the global economy and system is now at the mercy of these businesses to a defacto point where there's no option any more. I believe it's a responsible direction for governments to legislate to control them, if nothing else then purely to guarantee risk management and sustainability for the population at large.
Suspending for a moment how unlikely it is to happen, imagine if Amazon decided tomorrow they were shuttering AWS. Or Google was ceasing providing search. These things are so essential to everyday life now the impact would be staggering.
Governments should be looking at these threats with open eyes in the same way they have had their eyes opened to global pandemic prep.
Actually, a common carrier, which is a private utility.
If they wanted Google to be a public utility, they’d have to seize or buy their assets; the former of which is prohibited by the 5th Amendment, and their ability to compel the second is absent because the relevant assets aren't within Ohio’s reach for that purpose.
This is exactly what needs to happen, and not just because Google is steering people towards their own products preferentially. All the big technology companies are providing services that are fundamentally necessary to live and operate in our modern society. Their ability to act outside the laws that constrain public agencies or other regulated private organizations is simply not acceptable. I am specifically thinking of their role in information exchange - whether that is books sold on Amazon, results shown on Google search, social media accounts/posts on Facebook, or other examples.
These companies are simply too big and powerful to be allowed to continue operating as unregulated private companies. They are more than just another random company, given that they have billions of users and control the public square as it exists today. The fact that they have massive network effects with billions of users limits their exposure to competition - for example, it's not possible to make a viable competitor to YouTube given that Google has an existing platform with a large number of content creators, advertisers, and users. The same network means that Google's decisions (to ban content, demonetize content, lock user accounts, etc.) are as impactful as a government agency or any other utility making such a decision, because there isn't a good alternative. And in many ways, the tech companies are more powerful than governments because they have more users than most nations have citizens.
In comparison, a power utility can't just arbitrarily turn off your electricity because they disagree with your speech or political position. The water company can't withhold service without explanation. Virtually all laws that companies have to abide by constitute "regulation". There's nothing stopping us from tweaking how companies like Google are treated.
I don't want more utilities, I want more competition, failure, and new players to fill spaces where old players died. Crony protectionism, and lax acquisition constraints are why we have a lot of these companies at where they are.
When the seeming majority of exit plans for companies is an acquisition by a larger existing entity you have a problem. If our laws were better, people would be able to compete against <FAANG HERE> because they wouldn't have a hand in a crazy amount of markets and able to easily fend off good newcomers without a good amount of resources being expended. I heavily disagree with making things like Google a utility when the reason they're where they are today is largely artificial. They are not a natural monopoly they just took advantage of a weak government and pulled up the ladder behind themselves.
Can anyone point to any Ohio legal precedents where something not regulated by PUCO has been considered a common carrier?
Per the original "An entity can be a common carrier and/or public utility under Ohio common law,even if it is expressly excluded from regulation by PUCO"
I'd be curious what precedent makes Google a common carrier in Ohio law. From a US federal standpoint individual websites appear to me more akin to radio broadcast stations, which according to Ronald Coase had a failed attempt to be declared common carriers.
I am not a lawyer, so I'd be happy to be corrected on that.
Why can't we all collectively show an attitude of humble gratitude to an organization that has done so much to advance our civilization and improve our quality of life?
[+] [-] amadeuspagel|4 years ago|reply
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's skyline, before you see links to other image search sites.
Same is true for a lot other stuff. If you search "timer", you'll see a timer, not links to various timers that look ugly as shit.
As a consumer, I love it. So much easier.
On the other hand, google could take over almost any business like this. At least, any business that is "functional" in the sense that the only thing you really want is to get some output based on your input.
There's a clear tradeoff here between what's good for consumers, and concerns about democracy, the concentration of power, etc.. And also innovation. Why start a new company, if google can just take over everything?
There are only two clear, non-arbitrary rules: Search engines are only allowed to show a list of links, or search engines can show whatever they want.
[+] [-] rgbrenner|4 years ago|reply
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 "<city> 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 companies. Those info panels often come from wikipedia, but wikipedia is doing great.
This is something that sounds true, but I'm having trouble thinking of an example where it has actually happened. Examples appreciated.
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|4 years ago|reply
https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-w...
This is interesting because I always thought Matrix from ITA Software, a company Google acquired in 2010, was quite useful.
Wonder if links to Skiplagged get subjugated in Google SERPs.
If Google thinks it can replace other websites by providing better alternatives, that's great. But then the company should get out of the way and let users have a neutral source for a comprehensive inverted index of the rest of the web. If there is nothing else better out there, then let web users determine that for themselves. The index should be a public resource not controlled by one company that can see what users are searching for and engage in "front-running". (Websites that allow crawls by Googlebot, sometimes exclusively, are of course enabling the Google monopoly.)
1. Google bought Frommers in 2012 and nearly killed it. Thankfully the founder reacquired the rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommers
[+] [-] unishark|4 years ago|reply
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 other local restaurants the user was looking for. I assume they are doing this in some cases. But the last thing I want is to do a search and find the result list giving a bunch of new pages of lists, with yet more ads of course, to sift through next.
Software engineers are enjoying a nice run, where one can make lots of money applying basic software skills anyone can learn, grabbing free info anyone can get, and utilizing libraries everyone gets with their computer/phone OS but has not been provided access to by their hardware vendor. Hopefully technology will keep changing so fast the run will last forever (as long as you keep hopping to the newest bleeding edge). But this seems like borrowed time to me, access to free info and your own computer's clock or whatever is a commodity anyone can provide, whether it's someone earlier in the chain selling the hardware, or just millions of hungry programmers in developing countries.
[+] [-] Maursault|4 years ago|reply
Not to defend Google, but to be fair, 1) when searching for images, you're searching for images, not "image search sites." To search for image search sites, you'd search "all" (not photos) for "image search," which mostly returns Google image search and Google image search help pages as top results, burying other image search engines on subsequent pages. Google's search algorithm does seem biased against competitor image search sites, but maybe Google search is really finding only articles. Searching "all" for "image search sites" returns links to articles listing image search sites. Searching for Yahoo images returns Yahoo Image Search as the top result. 2) the images search results are actually thumbnails, and also links, so you see the thumbs precisely at the same time that you see links to the sites that host each image search result.
[+] [-] ahallock|4 years ago|reply
I want companies to be able to design products that best serve customers, not ones limited by narrowly scoped product definitions. Google's search page has advanced beyond query + results, offering interactivity and shortcuts. I'm not saying we shouldn't be vigilant if they start abusing their position and dominating too many markets, but let's take that case by case.
I also disagree that Google can simply take over other businesses so easily. They've failed so many times. You'd think Youtube Music would dominate, but Spotify is still more popular. YouTube TV? I cancelled that a while ago. What am I surprised about is that we don't have a really strong YouTube competitor. Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram have made some in-roads, but nothing I'd call a strong #2.
[+] [-] wyattpeak|4 years ago|reply
I don't see any problem with having arbitrary rules so long as they roughly capture the spirit of the outcome people want. The eight-hour workday is an arbitrary rule. The age of majority is an arbitrary rule. Zoning boundaries are arbitrary.
They all capture something we (most of us) fundamentally want, but the specific lines are approximate or convenient or customary.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|4 years ago|reply
Those rules are just as arbitrary as all the possibilities in between.
[+] [-] kbenson|4 years ago|reply
Actually, you can just leave it as tradeoffs between what is good for the consumer short term and what is good for the consumer long term.
Sometimes there are wider issues that affect democracy (e.g. social networks and information silos), but usually it's just an economic issue that people aren't looking at thoroughly enough.
The reason we try to stop monopolies before they happen is not because they are hurting consumers at that point. Often they are underselling competitors to achieve their monopoly so consumers benefit and love them. We stop them because after they have that monopoly they no longer have good incentives to keep being beneficial for the consumer, so we avoid the problem before it is one.
[+] [-] heisthefox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnick|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|4 years ago|reply
It seems more and more common these days that people start companies specifically with the sole intention of being acquired by Google (or another large tech company).
[+] [-] amelius|4 years ago|reply
Fortunately, the EU has the upcoming Digital Markets Act, ensuring fair competition in the digital space. You can read more about it here:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...
[+] [-] zeteo|4 years ago|reply
In the last decade Google has no longer brought to the consumer anything major like Gmail, Google Maps or Chrome. I doubt it's because of inability to execute - they can and will hire large numbers of very smart people. It seems more like a conscious decision to err on the side of maintaining the ~2010 status quo.
[+] [-] count|4 years ago|reply
In the olden days, if I went to AAA for travel advice, I'd get their partners and such recommended, not generic all-encompassing information. But I went to AAA for it. I don' see how this is any different. I can chose to go to not-google and Google then doesn't impact me.
Does Walmart have to put anybody's stuff where they want in the aisles?
[+] [-] codelord|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrycoder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwdv|4 years ago|reply
If your company is defeated by Google turning it into some widget then you don’t have much of a business, you just have a feature you monetized and isn’t really a long term source of revenue. You need rigorous innovation and a clear advantage over your competitors.
[+] [-] blntechie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|4 years ago|reply
Of course, one reason why I for one prefer to stay on Google Images (and have an addon to go directly to an image file instead of the site it's on) is that the sites themselves have so much cruft on them. And they kinda have to, because there's no money to be made on a minimalist image hosting site, while there's plenty of expenses - wouldn't be surprised if the brunt of expenses is abuse prevention.
[+] [-] troyvit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|4 years ago|reply
Ohio is asking for a third option; common carrier status. Search and other monopoly infrastructure would be run at arms length from the rest of the business, and anyone could pay (the same as google) to integrate it into their own offerings.
[+] [-] Chris2048|4 years ago|reply
I really just want to send out a query to various search caches, and get back results that are then merged into one dataset and shown in a native GUI. Forget this website shit.
[+] [-] SmellTheGlove|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stiray|4 years ago|reply
Please watch this, it is about not well known company called Luxottica that holds majority of world market for eyewear. There is a good posibilty that if you have sun glasses, they made them. It is not something technical, just simple merchandise, simple to understand:
https://youtu.be/yvTWjWVY9Vo
Since the video came out, they have also bought (actually "merged") one of the largest companies creating perscription lenses.
Now, do you like what you see? Is it "so easy" and "good" for the customers? Do you love it? How is their status impacting you wanting to buy eyewear?
Same is with google, amazon, microsoft, just name it. But yes, until they get a vast majority of market, they will not start to milk the users. As they want majority of market first.
[+] [-] o8r3oFTZPE|4 years ago|reply
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 is that Google Search is what they developed, it became the only search engine that most people use, and being a gateway tot he web and having the ability to spy on the world's web use is an unfair advantage that virtually no one else has.
Anything that becomes popular Google can gobble it up. Consumers cannot get superior direct benefits from non-Google companies for long. Google will acquire any such companies sooner than later.
[+] [-] traviswt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nkuna|4 years ago|reply
First it assumes Google can execute on said idea better than me and that I can't innovate. Here's the thing though; the bigger a company is the slower it gets. Sure, they can implement processes but big always gets more complex. Being small gives you an edge. What you do with that edge will determine whether FAANG apes your idea or not.
Secondly, big tech isn't immune to market forces. The more features they add, trying to please every last potential user leads to bloat. At some point their search experience is bound to get degraded from adding way too many features in pursuit of every last user. This adds more bureaucracy. More tech debt. More uncontrollable variables.
Search in 2021, especially on mobile, is vastly different from even 5 years ago. There are more ads, more tracking, more fraud, more shady back dealing, more user hostile anti-patterns. Yes, users currently enjoy their product but at some point surveillance capitalism will get its reckoning (see Apple, Europe, regulation in general) and for all the various products they have, search is the only relevant one. Without Search, how 'threatening' is Google really?
Same goes for Facebook and that hot mess of an app. News feed, groups, pages, dating, marketplace, messaging, watch, etc. All this reeks of a co. that's lost focus in pursuit of not ceding users to competitors. This just means when they fail (which they will!), they will fail spectacularly.
My advice to you and myself is focus on a niche. Try to do things that will be hard for FAANG to reproduce by making your users love your product more.
Competing head on with these behemoths is foolish, but a moat is possible nonetheless given proper execution.
[+] [-] bjoyx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] foolfoolz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrr|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jbgreer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johbjo|4 years ago|reply
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 monopolies, and therefore they can not be treated as "private companies". Decentralisation would be a technical solution, but meanwhile I think regulation is what will happen.
[+] [-] MarkusWandel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
Regulating Google as a common carrier would make more sense. Common carriers (which, by the way, UPS and FedEx are not, but Union Pacific is) are required to accept and deliver cargoes for anybody who ship according to their posted rates and terms.
[1] https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-4905.03
[+] [-] Aunche|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supernova87a|4 years ago|reply
So any system that has a duty to serve everyone eventually ends up with an operational component that has almost as much human interaction and problem solving required as the software side of it. Or the software has to be really smart or complex.
Tech companies don't like that because that increases a lot of costs. For some companies, they manage to convince their users to behave well enough to fit into the box. Other companies have to reduce their profits, or go kicking and screaming down the path of accepting the cost of business.
Example: Public electric company wants to switch people to smart meters to reduce the cost of going to read every meter, more reliable operation, easier billing, turn on/shut off, etc. Reduce the number of legacy billing systems. People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Now utility needs to maintain 2 systems, and an exception list of people who don't want the smart meter system, and still have to run trucks and meter readers, and procedures for people with old meters.
If something is to be declared a utility, the tech company had better gulp in fear of what's required. But we better as well, if we're thinking of wanting our software to be turned into something that involves those obligations and costs too. There's a reason that Google (well, maybe other tech companies) bring you new things, and the electric company doesn't. It's not all roses.
[+] [-] Hamuko|4 years ago|reply
Or is this just posturing to please the number one of the GOP (Dave Yost filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of invalidating 2020 votes in Pennsylvania)?
[+] [-] Buttons840|4 years ago|reply
How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?
[+] [-] emidln|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonjgreen|4 years ago|reply
Suspending for a moment how unlikely it is to happen, imagine if Amazon decided tomorrow they were shuttering AWS. Or Google was ceasing providing search. These things are so essential to everyday life now the impact would be staggering.
Governments should be looking at these threats with open eyes in the same way they have had their eyes opened to global pandemic prep.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|4 years ago|reply
If they wanted Google to be a public utility, they’d have to seize or buy their assets; the former of which is prohibited by the 5th Amendment, and their ability to compel the second is absent because the relevant assets aren't within Ohio’s reach for that purpose.
[+] [-] obnauticus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaysea|4 years ago|reply
These companies are simply too big and powerful to be allowed to continue operating as unregulated private companies. They are more than just another random company, given that they have billions of users and control the public square as it exists today. The fact that they have massive network effects with billions of users limits their exposure to competition - for example, it's not possible to make a viable competitor to YouTube given that Google has an existing platform with a large number of content creators, advertisers, and users. The same network means that Google's decisions (to ban content, demonetize content, lock user accounts, etc.) are as impactful as a government agency or any other utility making such a decision, because there isn't a good alternative. And in many ways, the tech companies are more powerful than governments because they have more users than most nations have citizens.
In comparison, a power utility can't just arbitrarily turn off your electricity because they disagree with your speech or political position. The water company can't withhold service without explanation. Virtually all laws that companies have to abide by constitute "regulation". There's nothing stopping us from tweaking how companies like Google are treated.
[+] [-] Grimm1|4 years ago|reply
When the seeming majority of exit plans for companies is an acquisition by a larger existing entity you have a problem. If our laws were better, people would be able to compete against <FAANG HERE> because they wouldn't have a hand in a crazy amount of markets and able to easily fend off good newcomers without a good amount of resources being expended. I heavily disagree with making things like Google a utility when the reason they're where they are today is largely artificial. They are not a natural monopoly they just took advantage of a weak government and pulled up the ladder behind themselves.
[+] [-] tclancy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rta5|4 years ago|reply
Per the original "An entity can be a common carrier and/or public utility under Ohio common law,even if it is expressly excluded from regulation by PUCO"
I'd be curious what precedent makes Google a common carrier in Ohio law. From a US federal standpoint individual websites appear to me more akin to radio broadcast stations, which according to Ronald Coase had a failed attempt to be declared common carriers.
I am not a lawyer, so I'd be happy to be corrected on that.
[+] [-] thegrimmest|4 years ago|reply