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Fun read! Drawing parallels of today’s world with the past. In some ways phonebooks of the past aren’t too different than the modern search engine. Hundreds of

Fun read! Drawing parallels of today’s world with the past. In some ways phonebooks of the past aren’t too different than the modern search engine. Hundreds of numbers (urls), a central lookup, and prominent placement to get your business ranked ahead of millions of others. As long as we have phone books, the person who took the time to write it all will always win.

Nevermark 5y ago
One of the competitive dynamics of phone books was that businesses were essentially extorted to buy advertising in any phone book whose publisher had the scale to give everyone in your town a copy. If you didn't buy advertising in every one of N phone books, you lost roughly 1/N sales for each book you failed to advertise in. More than one empire was built by introducing new phonebook after phonebook to town after town. Despite none of the towns needing another phonebook. So it may be a bittersweet situation that Google's lock on search at least saves businesses from having to advertise in 20 search engines. Although given Google advertising is an auction, maybe there are no savings.
- zxcvbn4038 5y ago
  I just realized it has been so many years since I’ve seen a phone book. Or phone numbers without area codes.
eesmith 5y ago
Fun?! When it came up two weeks ago I felt like it was making me more ignorant. Here's what I wrote at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28473805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28473805 : This makes no sense. It's like the author has zero knowledge of the relevant history, including things I learned in high school American history. Don't read it unless you want to get dumber. At the very least, here's some of the missing real-world context. The Mann–Elkins Act made the telephone system a common carrier in 1910, fully 11 years before this scenario. You couldn't legally "have their legal permission" for this practice. 100 years ago would have been part of the trust-busting of Taft and Wilson, at the end of the Progressive Era. AT&T had to do business bearing that in mind - something Google doesn't have to do now. More specifically, AT&T and the US government even had an out-of-court agreement concerning possible monopoly behavior - the Kingsbury Commitment - that ended with the Willis Graham Act of 1921 which said the ICC could regulate AT&T as a natural monopoly. Google doesn't face that now. > "PRESIDENT: [Clearly alarmed] Monitor every call? Are you joking?" One operator per phone call = very expensive. Ads won't pay for that. There wasn't the automation ability to play those recorded advertisement. As it was, a vast army of switchboard operators was needed just to make the system work. > "we give out the number of another beauty salon instead" They wouldn't be surprised. That's exactly what happened. That's supposedly the reason for creating an early automatic telephone exchange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch The quote attributed to him is: "No longer will my competitor steal all my business just because his wife is a BELL operator." > "You will bankrupt all of these businesses. .. That’s why we cap it at 25%." AT&T knew how to extract a profit. Quoting https://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/att.htm https://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/att.htm ] "Having secured its monopoly position, AT&T engaged in the 1880s in a series of rate hikes under the justification of expanding the service. The public faced with no alternative service responded negatively. Responses included establishing legal authority to regulate the rates (See Common Carriage) and also the establishment of municipal networks." Had AT&T taken this hypothetical Google advice, the public would have responded even more strongly. > "Well, we already have a word for that. It’s called bribery, Mr. Google" Are you kidding me? They would have said "It's called lobbying, not pax." The 1920s C-suite would have had no qualms with the idea of lobbying in the interests of corporate power. The WP entry for "Lobbying in the United States" even includes a political cartoon from 1889, titled "The Bosses of the Senate" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#Unfavorable_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#... , linking to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Se... . > We divested our telegraph business ages ago. WHAT!? They didn't leave the telegraph business until 1991. Here's a copy of their press release. http://www.baudot.net/docs/att--exits-telegraph-biz.pdf http://www.baudot.net/docs/att--exits-telegraph-biz.pdf .
- james_in_the_uk 5y ago
  Interesting factual analysis. I think the original piece was written as parody of Google, though, rather than as a criticism of At&t per se
  - mjevans 5y ago
    Criticizing politicians for taking //bribes// (Pac money) was also a great call. Things went both ways for criticisms.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    How is that parody supposed to work? That is, it looks like the piece is trying to show how ruthless Google is by comparing it to AT&T, and arguing that Google makes AT&T look like a piker. But every example of Google's proposed idea was either actually done by AT&T, or economically impossible. IMO, the parody should have gone the route of Google explaining how to avoid the anti-trust legislation that AT&T had to deal with at the time.
mjevans 5y ago
A phone book is literally an alphabetically sorted key-value table. Several tables usually, the secondary one is just on businesses and those might be sorted by a third column of 'type' first. Indexes for phone books also existed, I forget if they used to be notched in the side like better dictionaries.

Nevermark 5y ago

One of the competitive dynamics of phone books was that businesses were essentially extorted to buy advertising in any phone book whose publisher had the scale to give everyone in your town a copy. If you didn't buy advertising in every one of N phone books, you lost roughly 1/N sales for each book you failed to advertise in. More than one empire was built by introducing new phonebook after phonebook to town after town. Despite none of the towns needing another phonebook. So it may be a bittersweet situation that Google's lock on search at least saves businesses from having to advertise in 20 search engines. Although given Google advertising is an auction, maybe there are no savings.

zxcvbn4038 5y ago
I just realized it has been so many years since I’ve seen a phone book. Or phone numbers without area codes.

eesmith 5y ago

Fun?! When it came up two weeks ago I felt like it was making me more ignorant. Here's what I wrote at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28473805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28473805 : This makes no sense. It's like the author has zero knowledge of the relevant history, including things I learned in high school American history. Don't read it unless you want to get dumber. At the very least, here's some of the missing real-world context. The Mann–Elkins Act made the telephone system a common carrier in 1910, fully 11 years before this scenario. You couldn't legally "have their legal permission" for this practice. 100 years ago would have been part of the trust-busting of Taft and Wilson, at the end of the Progressive Era. AT&T had to do business bearing that in mind - something Google doesn't have to do now. More specifically, AT&T and the US government even had an out-of-court agreement concerning possible monopoly behavior - the Kingsbury Commitment - that ended with the Willis Graham Act of 1921 which said the ICC could regulate AT&T as a natural monopoly. Google doesn't face that now. > "PRESIDENT: [Clearly alarmed] Monitor every call? Are you joking?" One operator per phone call = very expensive. Ads won't pay for that. There wasn't the automation ability to play those recorded advertisement. As it was, a vast army of switchboard operators was needed just to make the system work. > "we give out the number of another beauty salon instead" They wouldn't be surprised. That's exactly what happened. That's supposedly the reason for creating an early automatic telephone exchange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch The quote attributed to him is: "No longer will my competitor steal all my business just because his wife is a BELL operator." > "You will bankrupt all of these businesses. .. That’s why we cap it at 25%." AT&T knew how to extract a profit. Quoting https://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/att.htm https://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/att.htm ] "Having secured its monopoly position, AT&T engaged in the 1880s in a series of rate hikes under the justification of expanding the service. The public faced with no alternative service responded negatively. Responses included establishing legal authority to regulate the rates (See Common Carriage) and also the establishment of municipal networks." Had AT&T taken this hypothetical Google advice, the public would have responded even more strongly. > "Well, we already have a word for that. It’s called bribery, Mr. Google" Are you kidding me? They would have said "It's called lobbying, not pax." The 1920s C-suite would have had no qualms with the idea of lobbying in the interests of corporate power. The WP entry for "Lobbying in the United States" even includes a political cartoon from 1889, titled "The Bosses of the Senate" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#Unfavorable_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#... , linking to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Se... . > We divested our telegraph business ages ago. WHAT!? They didn't leave the telegraph business until 1991. Here's a copy of their press release. http://www.baudot.net/docs/att--exits-telegraph-biz.pdf http://www.baudot.net/docs/att--exits-telegraph-biz.pdf .

james_in_the_uk 5y ago
Interesting factual analysis. I think the original piece was written as parody of Google, though, rather than as a criticism of At&t per se
- mjevans 5y ago
  Criticizing politicians for taking //bribes// (Pac money) was also a great call. Things went both ways for criticisms.
- eesmith 5y ago
  How is that parody supposed to work? That is, it looks like the piece is trying to show how ruthless Google is by comparing it to AT&T, and arguing that Google makes AT&T look like a piker. But every example of Google's proposed idea was either actually done by AT&T, or economically impossible. IMO, the parody should have gone the route of Google explaining how to avoid the anti-trust legislation that AT&T had to deal with at the time.

mjevans 5y ago

A phone book is literally an alphabetically sorted key-value table. Several tables usually, the secondary one is just on businesses and those might be sorted by a third column of 'type' first. Indexes for phone books also existed, I forget if they used to be notched in the side like better dictionaries.