Deutsche Telecom Calls For Google and Facebook To Be Regulated Like Telcos 106
An anonymous reader writes Tim Hoettges, the CEO of the world's third-largest telecoms company, has called for Google and Facebook to be regulated in the same way that telcos are, declaring that "There is a convergence between over-the-top web companies and classic telcos" and "We need one level regulatory environment for us all." The Deutsche Telekom chief was speaking at Monday's Mobile World Congress, and further argued for a loosening of the current regulations which telcos operate under, in order to provide the infrastructure development that governments and policy bodies are asking of them. Hoettges' imprecation comes in the light of news about the latest Google Dance — an annual change in ranking criteria which boosts some businesses and ruins others. The case for and against regulating Google-level internet entities comes down to one question: who do you trust to 'not be evil'?
Fool. those are entertainment companies (Score:2)
whole different business. just because Warner and Fox and Universal used film and books and TV channels to push entertainment doesn't mean Google and Facebook can't use OC192s to push entertainment. sit back, sell your fiber per bit at retail, and enjoy it.
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If the internet is a public utility, though, then the public has a right to decide how to regulate that utility and how it's used.
Google's profits don't trump the public interest.
Google isn't the internet, and the internet isn't Google. Nobody anywhere ever is going to stop you from making your own search engine. But making a good search engine is hard. Google is as popular as they are because they're good at making a good search engine. What you're proposing is having the government decide what is and isn't a good search result. And I'm going to tell you right now, that's a SHITTY idea.
If Google Search is regulated as a utility, then search results stop being sorted by what you're
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No one has said that the Internet is a public utility.
The US FCC has ruled that broadband Internet access services are common carriers. Broadband Internet access services are not "the Internet."
Utilities are regulated because they are typically de facto or even de jure monopolies and as such have no competition. One might argue that the Internet is a monopoly because there is no other competing global telecommunications network, but the Internet is no single entity.
Google may be the "big thing" now, bu
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Under EU regulation there were never a debate, broadband have always been under common carrier regulation and last mile subletting were made mandatory in the mid 90ies. And the anti molopoly regulation in europe are a lot less useless then the US counterpart.
Both Facebook and Google are being monitored by the EU antitrust regulators due to revenue sharing agreement with mobile
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no, it's because they are a kraut
(i'm not the original AC)
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Godwin point as first post, quite a feat!
Re:Yeah.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you get tired of Google, you "quit using it"?
Try that as a business. If Google arbitrarily decides that you no longer show up on search lists, or even that you no longer show up on a map--your business basically ends, unless all your business comes from the sidewalk.
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Does Google have an army, air force, navy and marines and nukes?
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Does Google have an army, air force, navy and marines and nukes?
No, but they do have a stranglehold on the search market. France, on the other hand, has an army, air force, navy and nukes; but no stranglehold on the search market.
What was your point...?
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Since you can't read, here's part of the post I was responding to:
"Exactly. It's better to have a government in charge where citizens have at least some form of control, than a private corporation who has absolutely no morals and who cannot be controlled. (Except by the previously mentioned government.) All these anti-government loons have obviously never lived somewhere where there was no government, or their story would change. I think in reality it is mostly just people who have a mental condition where
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Citizens have the illusion of control over the government
Governments give citizens the illusion of control so that we don't exercise very real control that we do actually have. But sometimes, we break the fourth wall. Need I mention Syriza...?
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Keep telling yourself that...
Re:Yeah.... (Score:4, Informative)
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It's arbitrary as far as an individual business is concerned, and that business doesn't necessarily have any control, insight or predictive ability over why it happens. If Google changes their rules and screws over 5% of businesses in order to make more money--even after you factor in the loss of business to Google because of its poor practices--then of course it will do so. Government is at least theoretically obligated not to do that.
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Government will fuck you sideways for a laugh, then shoot your dog and seize your house. I'll take Google's arbitrary of government's malice any day.
Whatever your perspective on that, someone, somewhere has to rank search results. If Google becomes capricious, people will stop using them (I haven't used them to search in 5+ years). If some government controls search results, it will get worse every year, and never ever get fixed.
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It's arbitrary as far as an individual business is concerned, and that business doesn't necessarily have any control, insight or predictive ability over why it happens.
Sure they do. They can hire an SEO company to link-farm them, and then Google will shut their ass down, like they did to JC Penney.
http://fortune.com/2011/02/14/... [fortune.com]
It's absolutely, totally, a negative control knob, but if some dumbass wants to turn that knob, they surely can. And the result is totally and completely predictable.
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Google does not arbitrarily filter search results. They filter search results in ways that makes them the most money. It's bad for business for them to simply remove search results because "they don't like you." Such a policy be bad for their own business, as it would hurt their search results, giving an excellent opportunity for competitors to claim a portion of their vast market share. Obviously there are complications to this, as Google does filter results in a way to promote their own business activities. But again, this is hardly arbitrary: they do so because they think it will make them more money.
ARE YOU SURE?
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I found the Google results often cherry pick. When looking for a Chinese restaurant for example, Google will show one, but on the way to it I pass 5 others. Correction, I passed 5 and took the sixth instead of making it to the one listed in Google. I sometimes do a search to find a cluster of restaurants and then do a sidewalk and parking lot search. Local knowledge is often better than placed ratings as they are often gamed. A good parking lot is a good indication. Good locations with a good local fo
Re: Yeah.... (Score:2)
A good parking lot is a good indication? Unless you're talking upscale Chinese, all the best Chinese restaurants I've been to have either had bizzarely shaped parking lots or none at all. This applies to both Chinese restaurants in Chicago as well as those within the greater Chicagoland area as far west as Schaumburg and north as Waukegan. It also applies to Boulder, Co and at least three cities in Texas.
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Forget the lot. Look at the cars. An empty lot at dinner time is a sign a table is waiting, but you don't want it. A full lot and a line at the door is a sign of a happening place, but expect a wait. Best to try a late afternoon brunch instead. Go where the locals go. Many bring their car. Judging the lot by the lot itself is like judging a book by it's cover. Content is more important.
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But if Google gets a reputation of not showing businesses, just because they have a hissy fit, then people won't use it because it isn't giving them accurate search results.
But Google and Facebook, are very popular, but still not vital. I can change my habits for Google with Yahoo or Bing,
I can swap Facebook with Twitter, linkedin or even Google+
Telco on the other hand own the infrastructure and you have little choice but to use it, or if you are using a competing service many of them are still renting the
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But Google and Facebook, are very popular, but still not vital. I can change my habits for Google with Yahoo or Bing
Uh... Yahoo uses Bing as their search engine provider. So you can "change your habits for Google with Bing or Bing".
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So is the Zagat guide a monopoly that must take all restaurant entries?I mean, if you run an eatery and don't appear in the Zagat guide, then you may as well not exist to people who use the Zagat guide to determine where to eat.
At what point does the Zagat's guide turn into such a monopoly
September 8, 2011? (Score:2)
At what point does the Zagat's guide turn into such a monopoly?
September 8, 2011, the day they were acquired by Google?
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i'm very much in favour of regulation of businesses, but that's one of the things that I think the government has no business regulating. Govt SHOULD be regulating google's surveillance of the public, google's business practices, google's tax evasion and many other things, but the content of google's website should be beyond their ability to regulate.
it's their site, their search engine - it's entirely up to them what criteria they use for ranking pages and when and how they change that algorithm. Nobody
Re: Yeah.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just to inform you: you have won the war against us. You've helped us to establish one of the most modern democracies, with features and systems your 18th century state can't compete with.
Remaining in gratitude, a german coward.
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The thing I like best about Germany. Every national monument, museum, library, air traffic control center or police station has a beer garden attached.
That and the beer (and the beer prices).
Where do you draw the line (Score:3)
Does Grandma's blog have to be regulated too?
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Does Grandma's blog have to be regulated too?
More like, does Grandma's blog have the right to equal protection/representation under the Google algorithm? I say, no.
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And why should it, pray tell?
It shouldn't. But the further we allow the line between "right" and "privilege" to be blurred and/or moved, the closer we get to that point. If Grandma were to enter into a contract with Google, maybe there is a story; however, simply relying on the current Google algorithm should not afford anyone protection under the law from it being changed.
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No only monopolies or market dominant instances. It is obvious that there are more than one grandma' with a blog. Also your grandma' is not a service provider, like Google with its search engine or Facebook with its social network site.
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Grandma provides information on her blog. Google provides information on which URLs have which information.
Sure, Grandma's service is much smaller, but she's still a service provider.
Yes? (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, TFA is crap.
What SPECIFIC regulations does Tim Hoettges want applied to Google / Facebook? And WHY those specific regulations?
Is Grandma's Facebook page the same as a "blog"? Grandma probably does not run her own webserver. Is she using wordpress.com or something similar? Would they be regulated?
Where are the follow up questions?
Sometimes Google does something that has an adverse effect on a business. So he throws that into the first topic. They are not the same.
Still less than Apple. WHO CARES? But throw that in, too.
"... snoogly-googly ..." Better throw that in, too.
"... known in the SEO industry as the âGoogle Danceâ(TM)*." Think about that. An entire INDUSTRY has popped up because some business are adversely effected by Google changing its algorithms. Bad for A but good for B means A pays C to be placed higher than B. As long as A or B or C are NOT Google, what is the problem?
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Agree on that. I read another article about that issue today, and that guy indeed had a point. (if you can ignore that facebook and google have been included for attention whoring)
The problem he mentioned was that actual phone operators are for example required to build all kind of gouvernment required bells and whistles into their network (emergency calls, independant power supply, wiretapping access...) while Skype et.al. don't have to spend that money and therefore can undercut them.
That point of view is
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Depending on the country you're living in, laws do require emergency calls to work when there's a complete power outage in your area. As a consequence, telcos do operate UPS systems within their whole network and do supply your landline with enough power to operate at leaste a corded phone
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The problem he mentioned was that actual phone operators are for example required to build all kind of gouvernment required bells and whistles into their network (emergency calls, independant power supply, wiretapping access...) while Skype et.al. don't have to spend that money and therefore can undercut them.
Apparently, you are unaware that German police are already tapping Skype calls...
http://www.pcworld.com/article... [pcworld.com]
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The biggest reason for user optimised search is because of commercial disputes over who gets on the first page and in what order. When you make it user optimised,everyone ends up having to suck it up because the search engine and the owners of the search data are not directly controlling placement, many end users are. Can you augment the user selection with some refinement algorithms, sure but at the core you still want to be able to say oh well it is the way users rate it and it would glaring and extreme
Monopoly Control (Score:4, Insightful)
As Google and Facebook have monopolies similar to Telcos own networks it is logical to control these monopolies. However, coming from Deutsche Telekom is a little strange, as they always try to shake monopoly control in Germany.
Re:Monopoly Control (Score:4, Insightful)
Google and Facebook do not have monopolies.
A monopoly is when there is no other other option. Only one telco has a phone wire going to your house. You don't like Google? Fine, use Yahoo, or MSN, or DuckDuckGo, or any of the other million search engines out there. Just because Google is the most common search engine does not mean it's a monopoly.
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Windows has never had a complete monopoly on operating systems, but that didn't mean they weren't guilty of monopolistic abuse by bundling Internet Explorer to cut out Netscape/etc.
False. They got done for just that. When they were grilled for the IE bundling you could not buy a computer without Windows. A mixture of a requirement that all computers come with an OS, predatory pricing of OEM bundles to discourage competition, its general market share, and the fact that there was zero alternative for the common user made them a perfect example of a complete monopoly. They didn't even need all of those requirements, some of them alone would have sufficed.
Comcast also fits the bill on a l
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How stupid are you?
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IBM and Microsoft both were regulated for their market dominance based on monopoly laws even though there were other companies selling similar products.
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No IBM was not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
The case was dropped as having no merit.
And the regulations on Microsoft have been stupid and pointless. Removing right click search from windows ? really ?
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They are not true monopolies... but they are used on a name basis. For example, what FB gives, and only FB does is the fact that it has a lot of momentum behind it, and people tend to use it as a primary way of communicating.
In the past, I was shown the door during job interviews because I didn't have a FB or Twitter account, being called a "fossil" since I didn't spew my life's trivia online for all to read. These days, my Twitter account is a placeholder with some sterile, sanitized stuff on it, and FB
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Or Google writes Germany off entirely and Germany loses access to Google, then the Germans start whining about it.
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The press publishers complained about Google "ripping off" their "high-value" work (copy&paste from press agencies) by showing teaser texts of news articles as a result of ews searches. They lobbied for a german law that any website has to arrange contracts with the press publishers if they wanted to show some of their content. Google did offer them a contract like this: we may use your services for free, otherwise we won't show your content at all. It's perfec
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I'm not just talking publishers, I mean block Germany completely :)
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A monopoly is when one company controls the vast majority of the market. FB (owning Instagram and WhatsApp) certainly qualifies for social networking. And Google certainly does for search.
Further, a social network is, literally, a textbook example of a natural monopoly.
Yahoo! (Score:4, Insightful)
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If Google doesn't want me to be found, then nobody who uses Google will find me on the net.
I shall put a big "Use Yahoo! if you want to find my website" banner on my webstore, that will teach them with their 97% market share!
Alternately... your site could be more relevant, then it would have a higher ranking.
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Who do I trust to 'not be evil'? (Score:5, Interesting)
confused (Score:2)
How did telephone service become a guaranteed-access human right and lifeline? When will the internet become so essen
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I have always struggled to understand how some technology makes the transition from being a luxury or niche appeal, to something that government starts to feel is an entitlement or is deserving of regulation.
Government is owned by business. Businesses (theoretically) compete with each other. Look for a google competitor who gains something from such regulation, and you will find out who started this.
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When Sirius and XM radio merged, there was such scrutiny to determine whether that was an unfair narrowing of competition -- for satellite radio entertainment for fucks sake. Yet 5 years before that, the field hardly even existed -- and that was not viewed as a lack of competition!
Two reasons:
1. Because those services require the use of radio frequencies, which is considered public property. The FCC decides if the reservation of a frequency is for the public good or not when it is given to a private company. If the only way to use those services is through a single company, it may not be for the public good.
2. Monopolies are illegal-ish, because they stifle innovation. See AT&T
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With telephone service, it's fairly simple. In the US, it wasn't a case of the government looking at AT&T and thinking to themselves: "That looks nice, I want it.". AT&T was granted a legal monopoly on telephone service in exchange for being regulated as a public utility, providing universal lifeline service, and all that. Many other nations followed the US's lead and set up similar telephone monopolies.
In the '80s... during the Reagan administration no less... the US government finally realized
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I cannot answer the former. But the answer to the latter is years ago.
That's not just technology. Larger companies have more regulations on hir
If regulated ... then like NEWSPAPERS . (Score:2)
Some BundesBeamter (German official clerks) are confused between communications means and content providers. Google and Facebook are end-point attractions, not means of communication. They are far more like newspapers than delivery routes. At the limit, they might be considered messaging services and regulated like a post office or parcel carriers.
Odd how all these errors are always in "their" favor and never in ours. As such they cannot be random mistakes.
Nonsense (Score:3)
This is a complete distortion of why telecom companies are regulated. There's only limited space on utility poles and in conduits under streets. There's only finite radio spectrum available. Those are limited, publicly owned resources. Whoever controls them has a monopoly on them, by definition. It simply isn't possible for arbitrarily many companies to run their own fiber along those poles or use that spectrum. So we pick just a few companies to give monopolies to, then regulate them to make sure they behave responsibly.
But search engines? Social networks? You've got tons to choose from, and new ones are started all the time. If Google and Facebook are the most popular, it's not because they have exclusive use of a finite, publicly owned resource.
Regulated backends (Score:2)
Google is a customer of the teleco I work for. They are effectively regulated because we are regulated. I presume Facebook is no different.
Slow your roll there guys, your not going to make Google any more regulated than your customers are ...
Are the search results relevant? (Score:2)
Are the search results relevant to my query?
That's all I care about.
I don't give two shits about someone's web portal losing eyeballs and customers. If you're selling relevant products, you'll show up in the search results. If you're not, I don't give a damn about you. You don't have a "right" to profit -- you have to earn it.
Translation (Score:2)
Understandable from European perspective (Score:2)
It's the latest craze sweeping the nation... (Score:1)
Telekom, not Telecom (Score:2)
Company's name is Deutsche Telekom.
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I misread the the article's title as "Douche Telecom Call for Google and Facebook to be Regulated like Tacos." I'd misplaced my computer glasses.
Oops... (Score:1)
It's a shame really. That would have been an infinitely more fascinating article.
What about... (Score:1)
Microsoft, Oracle, or in the pas MySpace?
Euro Envy (Score:2)
For example, look at AirBus. It is a de facto EU sponsored monopoly. It has as much autonomy from the state as the Chinese companies owned by the Chinese military. No one in the EU bats an eye over this. (Note: US companies in the military-industrial complex get a similar ride to AirBus. I'm not addressing the issue of US hypocr