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Author Topic: Ohio Asks Court to Declare Google a Public Utility  (Read 4174 times)

rcjordan

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Ohio Asks Court to Declare Google a Public Utility
« on: June 08, 2021, 08:06:24 PM »
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littleman

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Re: Ohio Asks Court to Declare Google a Public Utility
« Reply #1 on: June 09, 2021, 07:55:53 AM »
The argument is interesting.  At what point does a market dominance basically make something a functional monopoly?  They are also arguing against the powers of vertical integration.  It is also interesting that this is happening in Ohio, which is pretty far removed from technology influencers.
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ergophobe

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Re: Ohio Asks Court to Declare Google a Public Utility
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2021, 07:45:17 PM »
What if Google responded by refusing to serve pages to anyone it geo-locates in Ohio? Just going dark in Ohio except for users savvy enough to use a VPN or what have you?
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littleman

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Re: Ohio Asks Court to Declare Google a Public Utility
« Reply #3 on: June 09, 2021, 08:00:47 PM »
I'm not sure that would be the wise move for Google.  It would bring a lot of negative attention and a flood of articles pointing out alternatives to Google services.  Bing and DDG would be very happy.
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ergophobe

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Re: Ohio Asks Court to Declare Google a Public Utility
« Reply #4 on: June 09, 2021, 09:39:34 PM »
I agree with all of that. I'd just love to see what would happen. I'm not even sure it would be good. But it would be interesting.

I suspect a first step would be to appeal and argue it to the Ohio Supreme Court and lobbying dollars such as Ohio has never seen and, failing that, major astroturfing efforts to get a referendum on the ballot (I don't know how easy that is in Ohio).

More realistic is what happened to AT&T. Looking at how awful AT&T is today, it's easy to forget how much worse it was prior to 1984 and how much innovation the breakup spurred (and arguably, how things were better prior to about 2005-2008 when SBC bought the brand from the parent company and reconstituted the mega corp we know and mostly loathe today). You couldn't even own your own handset then, let alone have a choice of providers.
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