Ohio Files Lawsuit To Declare Google a Public Utility (thehill.com) 79
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) on Tuesday filed a lawsuit asking the court to declare Google a public utility, which would subject the Silicon Valley giant to government regulation. Yost's complaint, filed in Delaware County Court, alleges Google has used its dominance as a search engine to prioritize its own products over "organic search results" in a way that "intentionally disadvantages competitors." "Google uses its dominance of internet search to steer Ohioans to Google's own products -- that's discriminatory and anti-competitive," Yost said in a statement. "When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access." The complaint alleges that as a result of Google's "self-preferencing Results-page architecture," nearly two-thirds of Google searches in 2020 were completed without users leaving Google-owned platforms, meaning users either never left the search page, or clicked to another Google platform such as YouTube, Google Flights, Google Maps, Google News, Google Shopping or Google Travel. A Google spokesperson said Yost's lawsuit would "make Google Search results worse and make it harder for small businesses to connect directly with customers." They added: "Ohioans simply don't want the government to run Google like a gas or electric company. This lawsuit has no basis in fact or law and we'll defend ourselves against it in court."
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Many thousands of people said this will happen. The only disagreement is in which year it will happen.
We're still in disagreement until you define "it" first. All I see is a delusional State assuming they can wield power over a Lord of the Donor Class. Your it is going to amount to shit for the next decade.
And by 2031, Google will probably own Ohio. And Boardwalk. And Park Place.
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So how much is Ohio going to pay (Score:2)
In other words, what stops Google from just shutting off Ohio, if Ohio plays silly games like this?
Let them eat (Score:2)
Nine words (Score:2, Funny)
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
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Precisely. Tambien, google is taking entirely the wrong tack with their response to this. If they had a Don Draper-level strategist in their corporate PR arsenal, they'd run with this...
"Ohio says we're essential like your lights and air conditioning. While on the one hand the government overreach is nauseating, it's hard to argue that Google isn't as important to your comfort as lights and indoor temperature control."
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I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Why do politicians brag about being awful at their job and people vote for them because of it?
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American myth is the Rugged Individual who Needs Nothing from Nobody. Politicians can succeed in appealing to this flattering myth.
I was thinking the cowboy portrayed in the movies/TV was a Hollywood creation. Early 20th century with most people living in cities looking back at the previous century looks so appealing compared to miserable living conditions of the industrial age. Motion pictures was the new thing and westerns was the hot genre (peaked in late 50s, early 60s). Hollywood figured if you can separate the cow from the boy, then you can create whatever character you want. We see the classic American hero John Wayne even thoug
I'll huff & I'll Puff & blow your brick ho (Score:1)
Re: Yes, AT&T is rolling their eyes (Score:2)
:rolleyes:
Yes, AT&T is rolling their eyes while saying "duh". Kiddies, AT&T was once believed to be untouchably powerful as the one and only telephone company, the company owning all the infrastructure. Then this happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Re: Yes, AT&T is rolling their eyes (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is that practically anyone with a moderate amount of resources (as far as VC money goes) can create a competing search engine (of course, if it became popular, it would have to scale up very quickly). The problem is convincing others to use it. It's not like Charter customers can only use Google for search, or AT&T customers can only use Bing. The problem is that Google is just so much better at search. To compete with Google, the resources are the easy part. The hard part is finding a Larry Page/Sergey Brin that can figure out the new brilliant way to do search. If competing with Google was just a matter of resources, Bing wouldn't suck so much ass (as much as I love DuckDuckGo and use it for all my personal stuff, at work I end up using Google 50% of the time b/c on technical matters Bing can't find shit).
For those who are familiar with Ayn Rand: Google is Rearden Metal. It's that thing that does something important better than anything on the market, and we're experiencing a period where the only way anyone can compete with it is if the government shows up with guns and steals the secret sauce. As much as I detest pretty much everything Google does as a company aside from providing relevant search results, that doesn't sit well with me. And I don't think owning the recipe to the secret sauce is the equivalent of having control over literal public utilities that take advantage of public infrastructure in ways others can't. Google doesn't have special internet privileges, they attained and maintain their dominant position by being the best at what they do, not through underhanded tactics (that they do other evil stuff is a whole different issue).
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Laugh it off. Just like the tobacco companies laughed off their enemies. And as someone already mentioned elsewhere, AT&T. And the way oil companies are laughing nervously at the CO2 lawsuits.
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I'm all for socializing Google, as long as the profits are also socialized. Put it towards education and you're essentially vaccinating people against the misinformation that Google can spread. It makes a whole lot of sense.
Too much sense, even. When people get educated they stop voting Republican, so Dave Yost won't ever let that happen.
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The problem with socializing Google is that the government now directly has that data, which is a step worse than their BS warrant request system they currently use. Worse yet, for countries other than the U.S., the U.S. government will be able to use that data in many nefarious ways. If the U.S. government nationalized Google it would be imperative that a functional replacement be created ASAP. As I said in my original post, considering that not even Microsoft can pull that off with their considerable reso
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The difference is that practically anyone with a moderate amount of resources (as far as VC money goes) can create a competing search engine (of course, if it became popular, it would have to scale up very quickly). The problem is convincing others to use it. It's not like Charter customers can only use Google for search, or AT&T customers can only use Bing. The problem is that Google is just so much better at search. To compete with Google, the resources are the easy part. The hard part is finding a Larry Page/Sergey Brin that can figure out the new brilliant way to do search. If competing with Google was just a matter of resources, Bing wouldn't suck so much ass (as much as I love DuckDuckGo and use it for all my personal stuff, at work I end up using Google 50% of the time b/c on technical matters Bing can't find shit).
For those who are familiar with Ayn Rand: Google is Rearden Metal. It's that thing that does something important better than anything on the market, and we're experiencing a period where the only way anyone can compete with it is if the government shows up with guns and steals the secret sauce. As much as I detest pretty much everything Google does as a company aside from providing relevant search results, that doesn't sit well with me. And I don't think owning the recipe to the secret sauce is the equivalent of having control over literal public utilities that take advantage of public infrastructure in ways others can't. Google doesn't have special internet privileges, they attained and maintain their dominant position by being the best at what they do, not through underhanded tactics (that they do other evil stuff is a whole different issue).
Google is not Reardon Metal. Even if they're "just better" (maybe?), free markets only work when all the actors can only act tactically, not strategically. The second you move into the second category you get the extraction of economic rent. Put another way, no matter how they got there, any actor with too much power is bad news in the long run. Caring about this is what governments are supposed to do.
Also not really sure about Google having any "special sauce", other than them being the first past a cert
Re: Yes, AT&T is rolling their eyes (Score:2)
And then after that, this happened:
http://techstaffer.blogspot.co... [blogspot.com]
Think of what this will do to google. (Score:2)
Will be federally regulated (Score:2)
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Wrong department... (Score:1)
Dead Before It Leaves The Dock (Score:4, Insightful)
Google will argue - successfully I'll wager - that because there are search options like Bing, AOL, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, that people are free to avoid patronizing Google and it's services.
That's not including MapQuest, Bing Maps, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Angie's List and others that provide services similar to, or even better than Google's.
Microsoft trued that too, didn't work (Score:2)
Google will argue - successfully I'll wager - that because there are search options like Bing, AOL, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, that people are free to avoid patronizing Google and it's services. That's not including MapQuest, Bing Maps, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Angie's List and others that provide services similar to, or even better than Google's.
Microsoft, at the height of their power and influence, tried that argument, it didn't work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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Microsoft was fighting an anti-trust case, not a court case to force them to be regulated as a public utility - very very different things.
Public utilities are what they are because the barrier to entry for a competitor is naturally so high that competition is unlikely - running two or three sets of power cables to each residence, two or three gas lines, multiple phone or internet lines, multiple water pipes, multiple sewerage pipes etc having two independent sets of rails between cities, many competing bus
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Microsoft has never been declared a public utility, plus the antitrust case you link to never actually went anywhere, though it looked like it was going to for all of five minutes at the end of the Clinton administration.
The antitrust case died under the Bush administration, when his pet AG Ashcroft declared that it was not in the nation's best interests to hold Microsoft accountable for what the DoJ had found were clearly illegal actions. Gates then went on to invest his ill-gotten goods in a tax dodge known as the Gates Foundation, which enabled him to make investments that profited him personally, notably in big pharma stocks which he has since liquidated — becoming more wealthy than he was when he put his money in
Re: Microsoft trued that too, didn't work (Score:2)
Microsoft's failure was to not lobby federal politicians - they were caught off-guard and learned their lesson quickly.
Infrastructure? (Score:2)
Well, if it's a Utility, then does it mean we should treat it as infrastructure and have to pay taxes to maintain it, or at least subsidize it the way we do other big business?
Re: Infrastructure? (Score:2)
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Technically what makes a particular service a *utility* is that it is important that it be available to everyone -- e.g. water, electricity, sewage, solid waste disposal. Not all utilities are tax-subsidized, although some are. For example in North America water service is normally entirely funded through metered user fees.
"Infrastructure" is a broader term, referring to assets, systems and services critical to the operation of a society or economy. Technically I guess that makes all utilities infrastruc
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The answer is consumer protection legislation, plus an aggressive consumer complaint unit in your state AG's office.
A lot of states will examine your complaint and send a C&D letter for you if the vendor is breaking consumer protection laws. If a lot of people are affected they'll even take the company to court. The money you sunk into your phone isn't worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to get satisfaction from Google, but for the AG it's not a financial issue, it's a law enforceme
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state AG's office - You mean like David Yost if you live in Ohio?
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Well that's my point. If you don't elect an AG who thinks consumer protection is his job, you're going to have to sue Google yourself. That makes Google pretty safe, because nobody is going to risk a million dollars in litigation fees to claw back $1000.
When I was in high school I had a friend who got a summer internship in the AG's consumer protection office. His job was to read consumer complaints, then draft a C&D letter for a department lawyer to review and sign. I was surprised that they'd let
Yes. You're using the services (Score:2)
There are alternative similar services provided by other companies.
If you violate their terms of service, they are not obligated to continue providing the service.
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No, not even close to entirely. My real estate taxes were raised to pay for bonds for new water supply infrastructure to get Lake Michigan water to replace / supplement the old water service from wells. And I'm not even connected to that water, I have a private well.
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As an aside, most water service outside of large cities is funded mostly by debt. User fees don't cover the whole bill and property taxes aren't high enough to cover the costs of sprawling infrastructure in USA's suburban wastelands.
Ridiculous grandstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is 100% right when they say it has no support in fact or law, but that isn't the point. The point is for Ohio's AG to get his name in the paper every day for being the guy who's suing Google. This should be bad for him when people figure out he's wasting his time (and the state's money) on a garbage lawsuit, but unfortunately that isn't the most likely outcome.
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There have been stories on Slashdot about this very thing, like this one [slashdot.org]
You can point out the grandstanding and that the suggested solution is horrible or doesn't make sense, while still acknowledging that the complaint is factual. You can. Google's lawyers can't, because in our system if you acknowledge any wrong doing or even unintentional harm done, you're basically volunteering to lose badly.
That's unfortunate, and it means people are just used to denials because that's how business is done whether the
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Not defending Google as a firm, but I found articles like the one linked above to be a tad disingenuous if not slanted.
"We examined more than 15,000 recent popular queries and found that Google devoted 41 percent of the first page of search results on mobile devices to its own properties and what it calls "direct answers," which are populated with information copied from other sources..."
They basically combine two categories into one. The results that are Googles own properties and those "direct answers" f
Re: Ridiculous grandstanding (Score:2)
That people choose to not flip thru all 46,785,385 responses to your 'funny cat video' search isn't Google's fault, and notice how they picked the smallest screen size to establish first page...
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The article has a link to more details [themarkup.org] where you'll find that breakdown, and also a response from a Google representative who of course denies any issues and makes a counter claim that the research is flawed.
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As a fellow Ohioan, I would question many of the GOP's decisions and priorities.
Except for one problem.
There is only one electable alternative - the demoncrats - and they are infinitely worse.
They openly support the murder of unborn babies and the nationalization and/or government appropriation of everything.
When they are all gone, then I will be happy to hold the GOP to account for when they do dumb, stupid, or un-Constitutional things.
Until then, I grudgingly tolerate them because they are by far the less
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The Ohio AG will look foolish when the case is thrown out ...
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...but unfortunately that isn't the most likely outcome.
Yep. This kind of stunt might make him a senator some day. If it does somehow happen to backfire, he'll probably just get a slap on the wrist like this guy [washingtonpost.com].
battle of the banks (Score:2)
Google 2020 Revenue= $182B
Guess who's going to win
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Bogus! (Score:1)
They're supposed to make the ISP a public utility. Regulate the wire, not a channel
What stupid crap (Score:4, Informative)
Google isn't anything like a common carrier -- for starters, it doesn't offer anything like carriage. Upon reading the actual complaint, which humorously has a typo right at the beginning calling Google "Good Search," it is immediately apparent that this is really an antitrust suit -- arguing that Google weighs results in favor of its own services -- in which case the remedy sought is the wrong one. I particularly enjoyed how they bitch about Google being popular because it's so damn accurate. I mean, how dare they, right? Well, the goal of the complaint is to prohibit that: instead of providing relevant results, they want Google to treat all results to a query as being equal. They also commit the sin of lying to the court through omission, in that they only point out factors that support them, and fail to address factors that don't. That's always a bad plan -- state how you disagree, how they don't apply, how this is different, how they actually do help you -- something -- but don't just ignore them.
Anyway, I don't give Ohio good odds of anything but wasting a lot of taxpayer money in scoring political points for the state AG.
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make internet connections a public utility (Score:4, Insightful)
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That would be the ISP's that should be a utility, whether public or private and regulated, not the sites on the internet. Common carrier was originally applied to steamship lines and railroads, not the ports and stations or towns they connected. And even common carriers can have rules, I was denied service on a ferry once for having gasoline in the wrong type of jug (actually wrong lid).
Re: make internet connections a public utility (Score:2)
Google =/= internet
You don't need google to pay bills online.
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since so much of the internet is a REQUIREMENT to pay bills, do banking and financial, disabled people REQUIRE the internet to do their shopping since they can not get up and go anywhere, the internet is used for school and work for many people, too much is riding on the internet to NOT make it a public utility
This. The entire notion of claiming that a website is an essential public utility when you can't even use it without Internet service, which currently *isn't* a public utility, is laughable.
When the state of Ohio has community broadband or equivalent in every one-horse town, rather than passing laws to prevent actual public Internet utilities [muninetworks.org], I'll take this clown seriously. Until then, I can only assume he has decided to run for governor, and it is just filing frivolous lawsuits to try to get people to n
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No, seriously, that will be the legal argument. Remember, there are plenty of groups that provide free cell phone service to people. And, I didn't even touch on going to the library to use the internet and free internet from places like McDonald's and Starbucks.
truthfully..... (Score:2)
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Such silly grandstanding. (Score:2)
tfa (Score:2)
Here is the actual, authoritative press release article: https://www.ohioattorneygenera... [ohioattorneygeneral.gov]
It links to the lawsuit https://www.ohioattorneygenera... [ohioattorneygeneral.gov] which you can see and evaluate on the merits yourself.
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Google counts on good sense winning out? (Score:2)
I'd agree with sentiments but not on "utility" (Score:2)
Instead of trying to classify google as a utility, which they're not in the traditional sense, it's more reasonable to simply amend the legal definition of a monopoly, or create a new legal definition for companies with gross dominance in a market even when competition exists. You can then regulate with similar monopolistic language and it would cover all markets.
Trying to argue that Google Search is a utility, well, you can't argue that without including every other possible search engine which performs th
Unintended consequences (Score:2)
Fundamentally flawed (Score:2)
There's a huge issue that Google products are already popular and decently usef