This is a failed model. There is no incentive for Google to continue to update the public version, and it would quickly fall out of date while Google focuses on their own internal copy. It’s a solution suggested by lawmakers who fundamentally don’t understand how computers work.
How is this different from the 1956 consent decree? AT&T spent money developing its patents. But on the basis of longstanding law around public interest, it was forced to license them to third parties. (Note: not give them away.)
> and continues to dedicate to keep the index up to date?
The author explicitly contemplates, again within the context of the 1956 consent decree and many subsequent and preceding actions by the U.S. government (mostly around pipelines, et cetera), use fees paid to Google.
> There is no incentive for Google to continue to update the public version, and it would quickly fall out of date while Google focuses on their own internal copy
Google wouldn't be permitted to maintain dual states. Its algorithms would have to use the public index.
The article makes the conceit of equating an online data store to the telephone infrastructure. Google is not preventing other companies from indexing the internet in any way, shape or form. There is no barrier to another company building a similar data store from scratch using the existing internet infrastructure. On the other hand, laying out your own wires has physical limitations, especially when another company has claimed the most optimal route. In such a scenario, your costs will always exceed theirs (more infrastructure to reach the same consumers).
Regarding forcing Google to use the same index: How does DoJ plan to enforce this? How would DoJ ever be sure that Google is in compliance? I once again assert that the law magically assumes new technology to solve old technology problems without fundamentally understanding how computers work. Computers are copy-on-write by design. Delete always requires an extra step, and the verification that only one copy exists is impossible to make in the digital domain.
AT&T wasn't blocking anyone from laying interstate copper. It's just prohibitively expensive to do so. The analogy, down to the network effects, is quite apt.