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Google The Courts

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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Ohio Files Lawsuit To Declare Google a Public Utility

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  • I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

    • 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."

    • 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?

      • by pbasch ( 1974106 )
        I speculate that this is because the central tenet of the American myth is the Rugged Individual who Needs Nothing from Nobody. Politicians can succeed in appealing to this flattering myth. And then, when the RIwNNfN needs something from somebody (as he/she inevitably will) their local politicians can arrange for one of their private sector cronies to supply the need. They, in turn, can manipulate the Wall St financing system to cut their competitors off from resources.
        • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

          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

    • :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].

      • by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @08:29PM (#61467798)

        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).

        • This is merely the first shot fired. There will be more. Too many politicians and others hate Google.

          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.
          • 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.

            • 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

        • by PJ6 ( 1151747 )

          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

  • They will have to adhere to the local public service commissions guidelines. They can locally regulated. Its would be a wondrous shitshow to watch.
    • It will end up federally regulated like telephone, interstate and all that, not local like power and water.
      • by Revek ( 133289 )
        Telephone companies are regulated both federally and locally in my state. You can file a complaint with the FCC and even if you pay the fee to do so it doesn't mean squat. File a PSC complaint with proof and things will start moving. We had a problem with AT&Fee not fixing problems with their routing on cell towers in our part of the state. We located the problem and told them and they never even checked. A PSC complaint with recordings of us telling them where to check and their refusal to do so l
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward
    This should have been filed under the good-luck-with-that dept.
  • by IonOtter ( 629215 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @06:32PM (#61467450) Homepage

    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.

    • 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].

      • 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

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • 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

      • Microsoft's failure was to not lobby federal politicians - they were caught off-guard and learned their lesson quickly.

  • 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?

    • If Google ever paid its corporate taxes we could certainly talk about incentives at some point
    • i will agree to that providing google removes ALL the advertising from google search engine, and all of android apps, and have ublock origin embedded in chrome browser
    • Um US tax payers already subsidize is so....
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      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

      • by lsllll ( 830002 )
        So, let me get this straight. I piss Google off for whatever reason they choose to decide is pissing them off and they can cut my Google account off and all of a sudden my Android phone, which I paid for, is half as useful as before and there's no XDA firmware that supports my phone. So that's okay?
        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          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

          • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            state AG's office - You mean like David Yost if you live in Ohio?

            • by hey! ( 33014 )

              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

        • provided by a private-sector business, and without paying a fee for those services I might add.
          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.
      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        For example in North America water service is normally entirely funded through metered user fees.

        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.

      • For example in North America water service is normally entirely funded through metered user fees.

        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.

  • by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @06:50PM (#61467492) Homepage

    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.

    • by xalqor ( 6762950 )

      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

      • 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

        • 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...

        • by xalqor ( 6762950 )

          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.

    • Lol.. I swear I didn't see this before I made my copycat post below.
    • As a resident of this state, I have no faith in my fellow Ohioans to ever hold the GOP to task for anything. They'll fall all over themselves to vote for this idiot and every other one. We still haven't kicked out the very corrupt house leader nor rolled back the obviously corrupt HB6 bailout. Why would they? No one ever punishes them for malfeasance.
      • 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

    • The Ohio AG will look foolish when the case is thrown out ...

    • ...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].

  • Ohio 2022/2023 budget=$37B ($74B biennial)
    Google 2020 Revenue= $182B
    Guess who's going to win
    • +1 Just so funny and true
    • by lsllll ( 830002 )
      SMH. You couldn't post a most stupid comment than trying to draw conclusions based on their budget/revenue. It's almost as stupid as posting that Ohio is going to win because it has X million residents vs. Google only employing 500K.
  • They're supposed to make the ISP a public utility. Regulate the wire, not a channel

  • What stupid crap (Score:4, Informative)

    by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @06:55PM (#61467514) Homepage

    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.

  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @06:57PM (#61467524)
    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
    • by dryeo ( 100693 )

      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).

    • Google =/= internet
      You don't need google to pay bills online.

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      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

    • You have a cell phone right? So you have an internet connection.

      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.
  • I think they should pushed this against FB and twitter as would be easier to prove on them as they have pretty much become the town square. FB is pretty much required if you are opening a business at this point. Its like having a phone 40-50 years ago.
    • by lsllll ( 830002 )
      I absolutely, wholeheartedly agree with you. Perhaps this will embolden another state to go against FB and yet another to go against Twitter. The way these douchebags sensor posts they don't agree with behooves me.
    • Lol, you numb-nuts all have the same dreary talking points. "Muh town square!". Give it a rest, doofus.
  • Google could hire a literal clown, or even Rudy Juliani to defend this case in court. First statement: "Yawn. Transparent grandstanding by silly AG seeking attention, Google rests it's case."
  • 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.

  • They can't be betting on a naive assumption, but "they" might be a committee, so I guess they can be acting as though that naive. It won't make sense to assert as Gospel that Google's search results are inherently based on sexism, racism, classism, and cultural elitism, and people are unlikely to make a convincing argument that such is the case, but some might see an advantage in arguing so.
  • 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

  • Cable, electric, and telephone companies are public utilities and have monopolies. This would allow Google to lobby to be a monopoly and point to other public utilities as examples for why they should be granted a monopoly.
  • Making all search results equal is antithetical to what a search engine is. The purpose of a search engine is to be biased. There are many different biases that can be used. Popularity being a commonly thought one. As a person who does a decent amount of research, I don't care about popular, I want useful. But how would I even go about defining that in a searchable way? The most useful information might be completely unpopular.

    There's a huge issue that Google products are already popular and decently usef

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