[currysausage]

> but at some point you have to admit that's too much power for one company to have

Competition law doesn't punish market power. Punishing success would be insane. The abuse of market power is what is illegal. And abuse needs to be proven.

Yes, Google Maps is the first result if you search for "maps" on Google. Search for "maps" on Bing and the first result is... also Google Maps. So maybe, Google Maps is just the leading mapping service on the Web?

> So far we've seen no evidence that they've done anything like this, but if history is any indicator

So far we've seen no evidence that the defendant has indeed killed anyone, but can we be sure that he hasn't? No, but: In dubio pro reo.

[learc83]

>Competition law doesn't punish market power, that would be insane. The abuse of market power is what is illegal. And abuse needs to be proven.

Regulation doesn't require proof of illegal behavior. Yes to punish Google executives criminally would require proof of illegal behavior.

But congress could easily pass a law that said search engine companies are subject to government search algorithm audits, with no proof of illegal activity required.

>So far we've seen no evidence that the defendant has indeed killed anyone, but...

This is a regulatory issue, not a criminal trial. I'm not suggesting that any Google executives be punished for anything.

I'm suggesting that the potential for Google to do harm is too large not to examine the possibility of regulation. We don't allow private citizens to make weapons of mass destruction because the potential for harm is too great. In my opinion we also shouldn't allow private citizens to control the internet.

[currysausage]

> Regulation doesn't require proof of illegal behavior.

Sanctions under competition law do require proof of abuse of market power.

ISP-like regulation, which is a different beast, is usually being justified by the fact that ISPs are natural monopolies. [1]

> In my opinion we also shouldn't allow private citizens to control the internet.

What makes a search engine useful? The relevance of results. In my opinion, private companies (Google in particular) do a fairly good job at providing relevant results. I prefer that over a government-approved "neutral" algorithm, whatever that would even mean.

If you feel that Google's results aren't relevant, give a competitor a try. Nothing stops you. Do you run a web site that was blocked by Google without justification? Go ahead, complain. The mere possibility of abuse doesn't justify tight regulation.

> We don't allow private citizens to make weapons of mass destruction because the potential for harm is too great.

Yeah, should Google ever choose to sell WMD to my neighbor, switching to Bing wouldn't really help me.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400975

[learc83]

>Sanctions under competition law do require proof of abuse of market power.

And I'm not promoting sanctions. The only thing I've proposed is some kind of transparency, like 3rd party auditing.

>If you feel that Google's results aren't relevant, give a competitor a try. Nothing stops you.

That won't do a thing to mitigate the harm I'm talking about. If 1 company controls every news organization in the country except for a few college newspapers, would you tell me that me personally reading the college newspaper would help the situation?

>The mere possibility of abuse doesn't justify tight regulation.

Publicly traded companies and financial institutions deal with plenty of tight regulation because of the possibility of abuse. We already force publicly traded companies to require independent financial auditing, why not require the gateway to the internet to undergo independent search auditing.

[coliveira]

Monopolies need to be regulated. Period. If Google got to that position for their own qualities, it doesn't change the outcome in any way. In a democratic society, whenever a business institution achieves a monopoly position it is time to move on to curtail the possible results of the power it has achieved over the market.