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I'd like to see the Sherman Act used against Comcast / Verizon / ATT. It's like the executive branch has forgotten that law even exists.

by beedogs 11y ago

mkhpalm 11y ago
Its not that our politicians have forgotten. Its that applying certain laws would conflict with getting filthy lucre. http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYear=2015 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYea...
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  The fact that Alphabet is just above AT&T in that list is what gives me hope that this time it will be different. It's a nasty business, and I hate that Google has to participate in bribery in order to be allowed to innovate on behalf of consumers, but the alternative of having AT&T writing the laws is far more awful (and is why we're in the mess we're in when it comes to Internet service in the US).
  - dforrestwilson1 11y ago
    In 15 years when the search engine have failed to evolve because Google is a monopoly and has no incentive to keep improving it, you may have a different perspective. I am not defending AT&T, just pointing out that corporations do not care, and all of them (even Google) ultimately seek profit margins at the expense of others.
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      I'm confident there will come a day when I'm ranting about Google and their anti-competitive practices (and not just, or even most importantly, on the search engine front) and rent-seeking. Google will be scary when they achieve the soulless status of T or VZ.
    - greglindahl 11y ago
      Uh, some of us started complaining about search engines failing to evolve a decade ago, guess we were before our time! Or at least too early to market.
    - ansible 11y ago
      In 15 years when the search engine have failed to evolve because Google is a monopoly and has no incentive to keep improving it, you may have a different perspective. LOL, Wut? I don't think you appreciate what it takes to maintain and improve a search engine these days. For example... Remember when link farms were big? They were doing this to boost their score for the existing PageRank algorithm. All search engines had to detect this, to determine in an automated fashion (because the web is waaaay too big) when to ignore that crap. And in a related issue.... spam. Fifteen years ago, guys like me were trying to fight it using regular expressions to filter our inbox (Spamassassin). It was a losing battle, even then. We've needed the very best machine learning to try to keep our heads above water. The spammers are constantly improving what they're doing too. The search engine looks the same (simple one-line text box), but the infrastructure behind it has vastly changed, and continues to rapidly evolve. Go read the Spanner and F1 papers... that stuff certainly didn't exist at all when Google started.
    - gh-lfneu28 11y ago
      > In 15 years when the search engine have failed to evolve because Google is a monopoly and has no incentive to keep improving it - Google improves all the time (source: I have access to the search quality measurements) - In all major countries they have someone trying to catch up to them and take their place - In some major countries they are not even in the lead Things can change in 15 years by the trends are not pointing downwards currently.
- rayiner 11y ago
  You know lobbying isn't campaign donations right.
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
I know, right? Google's in blatant violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, but rather than use it, the White House let a paid Google shill be in charge of the FTC, which is supposed to enforce it. But yeah, ISPs are a pain too.

I'd like to see the Sherman Act used against Comcast / Verizon / ATT. It's like the executive branch has forgotten that law even exists.

by beedogs 11y ago

I'd like to see the Sherman Act used against Comcast / Verizon / ATT. It's like the executive branch has forgotten that law even exists.

mkhpalm 11y ago

Its not that our politicians have forgotten. Its that applying certain laws would conflict with getting filthy lucre. http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYear=2015 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYea...

SwellJoe 11y ago
The fact that Alphabet is just above AT&T in that list is what gives me hope that this time it will be different. It's a nasty business, and I hate that Google has to participate in bribery in order to be allowed to innovate on behalf of consumers, but the alternative of having AT&T writing the laws is far more awful (and is why we're in the mess we're in when it comes to Internet service in the US).
- dforrestwilson1 11y ago
  In 15 years when the search engine have failed to evolve because Google is a monopoly and has no incentive to keep improving it, you may have a different perspective. I am not defending AT&T, just pointing out that corporations do not care, and all of them (even Google) ultimately seek profit margins at the expense of others.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    I'm confident there will come a day when I'm ranting about Google and their anti-competitive practices (and not just, or even most importantly, on the search engine front) and rent-seeking. Google will be scary when they achieve the soulless status of T or VZ.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    Uh, some of us started complaining about search engines failing to evolve a decade ago, guess we were before our time! Or at least too early to market.
  - ansible 11y ago
    In 15 years when the search engine have failed to evolve because Google is a monopoly and has no incentive to keep improving it, you may have a different perspective. LOL, Wut? I don't think you appreciate what it takes to maintain and improve a search engine these days. For example... Remember when link farms were big? They were doing this to boost their score for the existing PageRank algorithm. All search engines had to detect this, to determine in an automated fashion (because the web is waaaay too big) when to ignore that crap. And in a related issue.... spam. Fifteen years ago, guys like me were trying to fight it using regular expressions to filter our inbox (Spamassassin). It was a losing battle, even then. We've needed the very best machine learning to try to keep our heads above water. The spammers are constantly improving what they're doing too. The search engine looks the same (simple one-line text box), but the infrastructure behind it has vastly changed, and continues to rapidly evolve. Go read the Spanner and F1 papers... that stuff certainly didn't exist at all when Google started.
  - gh-lfneu28 11y ago
    > In 15 years when the search engine have failed to evolve because Google is a monopoly and has no incentive to keep improving it - Google improves all the time (source: I have access to the search quality measurements) - In all major countries they have someone trying to catch up to them and take their place - In some major countries they are not even in the lead Things can change in 15 years by the trends are not pointing downwards currently.
rayiner 11y ago
You know lobbying isn't campaign donations right.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago

I know, right? Google's in blatant violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, but rather than use it, the White House let a paid Google shill be in charge of the FTC, which is supposed to enforce it. But yeah, ISPs are a pain too.