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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

Strawman garbage aside, Google is a private company (in the sense that it is not owned by the government), and you objectively do not have any right to appear in their search results.

If you can make an argument to the contrary that doesn't revolve around "it's not 1776!" I'd love to hear it, but I seriously doubt that it would be in line with any US law. I don't think there's anything "stone age" about not requiring private companies to do things to help other private companies without compensation.

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While your misunderstanding of the comment may be a genuine mistake, your comment could be considered "straw man garbage" itself. Your tone is condescending and you might want to consider re-phrasing.

The post you're replying to is suggesting that removal from Google results _should_ be part of US law. Perhaps the impact of Google is such that there should be legislation regulating Google's behaviour.

In the UK we have a public phone book maintained by British Telecom. I can opt out of the phone book but BT cannot choose not to include me if I've opted IN. BT is a private company but this one aspect of their output is regulated by law.

The difference between a private company selling a service and something considered an essential utility is legislation, presumably?

BT doesn't need to decide which people are important enough to appear on page one. Google earned their position by doing just that—by being dramatically better than an unordered list of all web pages containing your substring.

It seems that every discussion about Google, Facebook and the like doing something that is not good always ends with the “it’s a private company” wildcard.

As if this excuses any kind of behavior.

Specifically, in this case there are in many countries antitrust laws, which target public and private companies alike.

We are not talking about "any kind of behavior". We are talking about whether a private company whose business model is to provide internet search results should have the right to decide whether to exclude certain content from those results. You can make an argument that entities like Google and Facebook have too much power, but I don't see the argument that compels such companies to include X in their service based on whether its "fair" or not.

> I don't see the argument that compels such companies to include X in their service based on whether its "fair" or not.

If our system worked, Google would almost certainly broken up and most of their databases (full of people's private information) couldn't exist legally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_business_practices

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law#United_States_...

It's not a "private company" thought is it? Not only is it "Publicly Held", but it's also a "Corporation" which historically meant it has certain rules it has to operate by. Not withstanding, of course, that such rules have been relaxed a lot in the last 40 years to appease big businesses, like Google.

Google holds the power to influence en masse. If not policed, Google has the power, if so it was to choose, to remove critical human knowledge from results. Perhaps the moonlanding never happened, or perhaps chemical weapons were faked. etc...

Their results can influence a great number of people, it can make or break a business, and it can (probably) cause or at least greatly contribute to a revolution in some countries.

You know, hence why countries like China want to control such power.

Internet service providers like Verizon and AT&T are private companies as well, and recent events make clear just how comfortable we are asserting a "right" to fair treatment of all traffic through their service (as we should).

Google indexing fairly is every bit as essential to the maintaining equal opportunity for websites and businesses on the internet as net neutrality is.

The US does have anti-trust legislation on the books.

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