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As someone who spent time researching the Ma Bells breakup and being knee deep in the local telecom deregulation, I see a lot of the same proposals when discuss

As someone who spent time researching the Ma Bells breakup and being knee deep in the local telecom deregulation, I see a lot of the same proposals when discussing the breaking up of Google and Facebook. This is the short story of what happened in the local telecom deregulation, which I'm pretty sure will happen if you were to break up Google. Consider this took place over the course of 20+ years, but I see the same things happening. After the Ma Bells breakup, there was a huge push to deregulate the regional carriers to increase local market competition. This was put in place in the late 90's here in Minnesota. Suddenly anybody could start a local telecom, lease lines from Qwest Communications (now CenturyLink), resell them and then compete with them in the local market. This spawned hundreds of companies that were living on razor thin margins. Many were able to exist up to the 2000 initial dot com bust. Many went out of business during the recession. Those who survived? Many of those merged with each other, or were bought by larger regional carriers who wanted to get into the Minneapolis market. This is what I see happening. You break Google up into smaller companies and within a decade, they will have all merged back together in some form, under different names, or they'll be bought by other companies seeking an advantage by using their technology. Its the same thing I saw happen in telecom. They tried to increase competition by deregulating the market and all it did was create a short-term gold rush and long-term crash. The problem will be the same with Google. Qwest at the time owned the infrastructure and hardware. Nobody had the financial resources to build out an entirely new network to compete with them so they took the path of least resistance. Which lead to a myriad of other problems. Billing, installation, nefarious things Qwest would do to hamper competitors from switching their lines, etc. You can break up Google, but over a few decades, we'll look back and understand it wasn't worth it.

christhecaribou 2y ago
So are you implying we shouldn’t’ve broken up Ma Bell? Or shouldn’t breakup Google? Perhaps Ma Bell taught us lessons to avoid this time around.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  >> Perhaps Ma Bell taught us lessons to avoid this time around. I hope this is true. I'm not sure breaking up Ma Bell was a good thing long term. All they did was break them up and then all the regional bells and smaller companies just re-constituted themselves again in some other form. The deregulation created more competition, but it was short lived because of economic pressures. For many business customers, their first dealings with local telecom companies that were competing with Qwest at the time were horrific. Business customers would lose their landline and internet service for days without any idea when it would be restored. Cutovers were problematic and a total crap shoot if they went smoothly. Qwest regularly tagged the wrong lines that needed to be cut over. The billing nightmares of moving off of Qwest to a local company were too numerous to remember. Many businesses would switch for the savings and within a few months, would switch back because it was just one thing after another these companies couldn't get right. Suddenly paying a little more for the peace of mind far outweighed any savings they were getting. I suspect Google customers will have the same experience so I'm still on the fence whether it will be worth it long term. The one argument you can make is that Google isn't simply a company that needs competition, but that's its actually doing damage by how they manipulate their search rankings and what results they're delivering to people - so in that regard, they absolutely need to be broken up.
wrongotron 2y ago
I think you ignore how much the telecom market reshaped itself in the meantime. Pre-breakup AT&T had complete market power over what technologies would or would not get deployed. The use of landlines has plummeted, to be replaced by cell phones. Today the average consumer has significantly greater choice when it comes to carriers, even if many of the usual suspects are still in the game. I question whether the breathing room would have existed in the market without the breakup. If you have an innovative startup idea in a space, and you have exactly one customer to sell to, you have a major uphill battle.
thomastjeffery 2y ago
> Suddenly anybody could start a local telecom, lease lines from Qwest Communications (now CenturyLink), resell them and then compete with them in the local market. Here in Utah, if you are very lucky, you can get an intentionally-designed version of that: UTOPIA. UTOPIA works by leasing a municipal fiber network to anyone interested in running an ISP. Because the same network is sold by many separate ISPs, each ISP must actually offer a competitive price. It's very effective: while Comcast (XFinity) will charge anyone it can >$100/mo. for 1000/40mbit, while every UTOPIA provider has their price set to ~$60/mo. for 1000/1000mbit. Actually, I just checked, and UTOPIA prices have actually gone down to ~$45-50, and ~$75 for 2.5G! The only problem left is that this only creates competitive pricing for areas where UTOPIA owns the network. Anywhere Comcast or CenturyLink owns still has predatory pricing. The worst part (in my experience) is that a handful of apartment developers have shady deals with specific ISPs, where they write the price, but not the speed, into each tenant's lease. For example, I must pay $100/mo. for what ends up being ~300/300mbit from SenaWave. That's better than my last apartment (owned by the same company) where the price and ISP were the same, but I was lucky to get any more than 100/100mbit. Competition works, so long as it is actively maintained.

christhecaribou 2y ago

So are you implying we shouldn’t’ve broken up Ma Bell? Or shouldn’t breakup Google? Perhaps Ma Bell taught us lessons to avoid this time around.

burningChrome 2y ago
>> Perhaps Ma Bell taught us lessons to avoid this time around. I hope this is true. I'm not sure breaking up Ma Bell was a good thing long term. All they did was break them up and then all the regional bells and smaller companies just re-constituted themselves again in some other form. The deregulation created more competition, but it was short lived because of economic pressures. For many business customers, their first dealings with local telecom companies that were competing with Qwest at the time were horrific. Business customers would lose their landline and internet service for days without any idea when it would be restored. Cutovers were problematic and a total crap shoot if they went smoothly. Qwest regularly tagged the wrong lines that needed to be cut over. The billing nightmares of moving off of Qwest to a local company were too numerous to remember. Many businesses would switch for the savings and within a few months, would switch back because it was just one thing after another these companies couldn't get right. Suddenly paying a little more for the peace of mind far outweighed any savings they were getting. I suspect Google customers will have the same experience so I'm still on the fence whether it will be worth it long term. The one argument you can make is that Google isn't simply a company that needs competition, but that's its actually doing damage by how they manipulate their search rankings and what results they're delivering to people - so in that regard, they absolutely need to be broken up.

wrongotron 2y ago

I think you ignore how much the telecom market reshaped itself in the meantime. Pre-breakup AT&T had complete market power over what technologies would or would not get deployed. The use of landlines has plummeted, to be replaced by cell phones. Today the average consumer has significantly greater choice when it comes to carriers, even if many of the usual suspects are still in the game. I question whether the breathing room would have existed in the market without the breakup. If you have an innovative startup idea in a space, and you have exactly one customer to sell to, you have a major uphill battle.

thomastjeffery 2y ago

> Suddenly anybody could start a local telecom, lease lines from Qwest Communications (now CenturyLink), resell them and then compete with them in the local market. Here in Utah, if you are very lucky, you can get an intentionally-designed version of that: UTOPIA. UTOPIA works by leasing a municipal fiber network to anyone interested in running an ISP. Because the same network is sold by many separate ISPs, each ISP must actually offer a competitive price. It's very effective: while Comcast (XFinity) will charge anyone it can >$100/mo. for 1000/40mbit, while every UTOPIA provider has their price set to ~$60/mo. for 1000/1000mbit. Actually, I just checked, and UTOPIA prices have actually gone down to ~$45-50, and ~$75 for 2.5G! The only problem left is that this only creates competitive pricing for areas where UTOPIA owns the network. Anywhere Comcast or CenturyLink owns still has predatory pricing. The worst part (in my experience) is that a handful of apartment developers have shady deals with specific ISPs, where they write the price, but not the speed, into each tenant's lease. For example, I must pay $100/mo. for what ends up being ~300/300mbit from SenaWave. That's better than my last apartment (owned by the same company) where the price and ISP were the same, but I was lucky to get any more than 100/100mbit. Competition works, so long as it is actively maintained.