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Comment by ttul | Hacker News Reader

IMHO Google should be regulated as a utility. Search is obviously as key to modern life as is electricity, water, highways, etc. Why do we leave this critical infrastructure completely under the control of one corporation, which is itself under the control of just a tiny handful of billionaires?

Now, I mostly agree with Sergey and Larry’s investments, and I love the long term approach and big picture view they take. But Google is still too powerful. The democratic will of the people is being disregarded here, and that is simply wrong.

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I agree that Google has a large control over the search market (and others), but it does not need to be regulated as a utility. Largely because you can just... switch. Really easily in fact.

I've been using DuckDuckGo.com as my primary search engine for the past 3 years and have never looked back. The results are most of the time better (sometimes worse, but so it goes).

What people?

Google is a Delaware Corporation with substantial operations in California. Who runs it in your ideal world? The people of Delaware? US federal government?

If you want a different Google for each jurisdiction, how small down do you give the control? A Google for France? A Google for each department? A Google for each Commune?

How does this approach fit with WTO and EU rules, not to mention the US Constitution?

What do you do if Google reacts against your move? Moves its employees/servers/incorporation? Do you run a Great Firewall of X to stop people in your area from using Google?

Hard to argue for this when ISPs themselves are not regulated as a utility, even though you must have an ISP to use Google, in many municipalities they are just as much of a monopoly as Google, and they have engaged in even more anticompetitive tactics than Google.

If you want to regulate the whole Internet infrastructure - from device to ISP to web browser to search engine - as a utility you might have more of a case, but that gets a lot more complicated.

While I agree with your concern about Google's enormous market share, Google isn't the sole owner of web search, and you're free to use another search engine instead. I've been using DDG exclusively for about two years already.

It would make much more sense to regulate ISPs, as people are "stuck" with them and don't really have the option not to use internet.

The democratic will of the people is being disregarded here

I would content that your personal opinion that search be a regulated utility does not reflect "the will of the people"

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