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Comment by Loquebantur | Hacker News Reader

Google has captured what really is a public utility and should be either state-owned or heavily regulated.

(Long) distance communications, just like public roads, breathable air, potable drinking water and so on do not fit into a "free market economy" paradigm.

They simply don't fulfill the basic requirements that make the "market" idea work.

Specifically, a free market needs goods from different suppliers to be easily interchangeable. You cannot sensibly build multiple roads parallel to each other, or have multiple water pipes installed and you have only one airway to breath through.

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it doesnt need to be a utility. they just need to crack down on every attempt google uses to kill the competition.

There should be an agency you can complain to for monopolies which has the power to dictate new rules to the monopolist with far reaching power to crack down on anything that smells like anti competitive behavior.

e.g.

- force banking apps that try to secure themselves with google play services to make that dependency optional.

- force google to stop blocking newpipe, aurora, etc.

- force google pay to make itself available on any platform that wants to integrate it (apple, graphene)

- force google to allow alternative app stores to become first class citizens.

That's the legal paradigm that we used to stop the railroads from choking America. But the real killer of their power was the Interstate Highway System - i.e. government funded infrastructure. Prior to the IHS there wasn't really ANY nationally funded infra[0] of that scale, we'd outsourced building it to private industry instead. After that it's basically assumed that infrastructure was the government's job, to the point where even the most conservative among us would point to "roads" as a thing governments do well and should be empowered in doing.

So anyway, the US government should run an open-access, quad-track railroad and fiber backbone along every highway. Maximize the ROI on that ROW. Also they should nationalize Android and iOS.

[0] Because slavery. The South really, REALLY hated any government roads because it diminished the economic power of literally owning a lot of people. Hell, one of the stipulations of the Confederate Constitution was to strip the General Welfare clause out of the constitution.

I still think nationalizing is a bad idea. There is no legitimate competition between railroads whereas mobile ecosystems can compete.

Mobile app stores are more like banks - a big problem when there are not a lot but a problem that can be remedied by having the government compete (e.g. with a post office bank).

The government could set up a competing app store, that might not be a bad idea, actually. They could hardly do a worse job than google and apple at vetting app developers and it would put a firecracker up google and apples ass.

That never works in the US, the monopolist will just wait it out 4-8 years until there is a friendly administration. You have to break them up any time you have the chance, it’s the only effective remedy.

> Google has captured what really is a public utility and should be either state-owned or heavily regulated.

I think part of what makes a utility a utility is that the nature of the service is naturally a monopoly. For example, you can only realistically have one set of waterways, so the company providing tap water as a service is a utility. Same with power lines, you can only realistically have one set, so the electricity-supplying company is a utility. With phone/internet service, I imagine that also requires sharing infrastructure.

Google doesn't fit in that paradigm. The nature of their services don't naturally require sharing resources to compete. They a monopoly simply because they amassed a ton a money to do things that other people can't, like drive on all roads on Earth with special cameras, or host however many videos there are on YouTube, serving those videos throughout the world, and even pay livable wages to the creators of the videos.

While I agree with where you're coming from, I think you're overstating it just a little. It only seems like something that should be considered a public utility because Google has anticompetitively bundled what should be several distinct types of products together as one take-it-or-leave-it package. Android (really Google Play Services) should not be tied to the Play Store App (think how MS was forced to include a browser choice screen in the EU). Likewise the Play Store Curation/Hosting Service should not be tied to the Play Store App (ie Aurora store etc should work and be fully supported by Play Store Curation/Hosting Service through the Service having a well-documented open API). Then Play Store Curation/Hosting Service would have to compete on its own merits, rather than anticompetitive tying with two instances of Metcalfe's law (Android users plus app developers).

Nothing has been captured, any more than a company inventing anything has "captured" it.

And there are other companies: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, K Telecom T-Store, Jio, MTN Play.

Not even close to a captured utility. And if it were, which state on the planet should own it?

> there are other companies: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor,

Tell me about the different OSes each of Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor etc. run then that we can choose from.

It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.

> Tell me about the different OSes each of Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor etc. run then that we can choose from.

Other companies using Google's incredible R&D spend and selling phones that use it is not Google's failing.

And we're talking app stores. They all have app stores disconnected from Google's app store.

> It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.

No, on two counts. One: - and it's the same with Android - Apple exists, and so there's definitely not a monopoly from a lowercase personal computing perspective. Two: the conversation is about app stores. There are many app stores. It's like saying Microsoft doesn't have a PC hardware monopoly because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.

> Other companies using Google's incredible R&D spend and selling phones that use it is not Google's failing

On the contrary. I disagree.

It's possible to build something so successful and difficult that it rises to the level of public utility.

Why not say that Samsung's phone manufacturing is a public utility? That's successful and difficult.

Samsung is, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, one among many. Like Dell. It's different in kind, not in degree.

If you make that comparison you clearly don't understand the point being brought up by others here. Which is fine. I'm not going to convince you, I'm just informing you how I'll be voting.

> They all have app stores disconnected from Google's app store

No they don't. Certainly not ones where my bank app or Netflix is. This is being obtuse on purpose.

> No they don't.

Yes. They do.

> Certainly not ones where my bank app or Netflix is.

Blaming Google for this is just insanity.

> This is being obtuse on purpose.

Agreed.

Except OEMS don't ship Windows forks with their own SDKs, UI frameworks, custom L&F, alternative stores.

Contrary to Google, Microsoft has a clear position on what OEMs are allowed to do with Windows.

Android OEMs largely don't do that either except for some specific markets where Google isn't a thing. Google does have rules for when you want to be certified and have Google Play and Google services on board, which you mostly do in the West and so OEMs comply.

Sure, they may ship a Samsung skin or preload some of their own junk, same as on Windows. That doesn't make what they ship a different OS.

The one exception would be HarmonyOS, but that's somewhat China specific.

Xioami, Huawei and Samsung all have the points I mentioned, with Android forks.

Harmony NEXT is no longer based on Android.

> Xioami, Huawei and Samsung all have the points I mentioned, with Android forks

If I buy a Samsung phone in North America or Europe today I get Google Play as the main app store, Google services etc. and if I want to develop an app for a Samsung Android phone, I use the official Google SDK and Kotlin like for every other Android phone.

They have their own skin and store, but nobody really uses that. Google Play it is, be it Samsung or Xioami. They're very far from offering any kind of genuine alternative to Google Play, Google or Android. Their stores are junkware no different than ASUS preinstalling some antivirus nobody wants.

> Harmony NEXT is no longer based on Android.

That's my point. Huawei is the only OEM offering something different, but not easy to get in Western markets and thus doesn't have app mindshare.

Nothing prevents you from using Samsung, Xiaomi or Huawei stores and cloud services, Google Play is only the main store if you configure it as such.

Google SDK naturally doesn't have the support for OEMs specific features.

Leaving just one Samsung example here, too lazy to dump everything else,

https://developer.samsung.com/mobile/galaxy-sdk-getting-star...

I am yet to see anyone disable OneUI, MIUI, HyperOS, EMUI for bare bones AOSP UI.

You seem to not understand, among other things, what a duopoly is.

Oh I do understand, those who don't understand are those without any clue about market legislation.

It is not their opinion that matters, rather what the law says and how many players are in the market, regardless of their size.

Google lets these forks do anything they want except things that take away money from Google.

Xioami, Huawei and Samsung have their own stores.

Why are you pretending anyone uses them? These phones ship with Google Play and that's what people use.

Because people do use them as well, especially outside Western countries.

Too bad I'm in a western country. I'm glad parts of the world escaped the duopoly but my part still needs to be fixed.

Get a Jolla.

Does this fact take money away from Google?

Naturally.

You're deluding yourself.

Pretending, some other company could come stroll along and take over Google's turf, completely ignores the underlying reality.

People don't talk on two phones at once, they only use one search engine regularly and they even only use one browser to surf the internet.

That bottleneck leads to market capture due to inevitable logical reasons, not because I say so.

If you want autonomous states, each one has to control their own infrastructure. Just don't forget to question your assumptions.

Ad blocking is what cements googles place.

But try telling the internet that their "morally pure" addiction to skirting compensation is actually what is killing (killed?) the web.

Every competitor dies in the cradle because 40% of the internet won't pay them while using their service.

Youtube with ad-blocking is the best video service on the internet, and no one can touch that.

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