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Deutsche Telecom Calls For Google and Facebook To Be Regulated Like Telcos
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'?
Does Grandma's blog have to be regulated too?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
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.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
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.
Wow. Invoke nazism because someone is a german? How racist of you.
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.
Just use Yahoo! or anything else. or stop complaining.
Google sure, because they have an ISP part... but only the ISP part is to be regulated.. which it already is...
The search engine, youtube and what not are SERVICES, nobody is forcing anybody to use them. If Bing and the others actually worked properly, people would use those instead.
Does not mean they have to be broken up. Every organization, group, or idea, will run its natural course. They all hit a peak, and plateau and maybe fade away or crash and burn or stagnate. I'd also like to see Mr. Tim do that to his own organisation, cause he's the third biggest telco and is surely 2 steps from becoming pure evil, as per his own logic.
Nobody, especially the regulators. The question that I'm more concerned about is which services are voluntary, and which ones are compulsory. I use Google's search engine and Facebook, but I don't have to. There are a ton of alternatives to each for internet search and social media. The fact that they happen to be the largest/most popular should not make them subject to special rules.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
no, it's because they are a kraut
(i'm not the original AC)
Godwin point as first post, quite a feat!
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).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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?
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. In that sense I watch and see some technologies become victims of their own success -- too many people "rely" on something, and you become a public good and it's out of your control.
How did telephone service become a guaranteed-access human right and lifeline? When will the internet become so essential that to not have it is unacceptable and must be subsidized?
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!
I would like to know the theory of when something crosses that border...
Yahoo! ?
Since the Evil Ice Queen has taken over as CEO, Yahoo! is THE worst company to go with!
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 they hate power, any power, whoever has power they will rail against.
Thinking that being German is akin to belonging to a given racial group is what underpins the Nazi ideology.
trustableEntity != government
Directly responsible for over 99% of all wars in the history of the planet.
Legal authority to execute citizens for arbitrary reasons, with only very rare exception.
Legal monopoly on anything it happens to desire at the time.
No thanks. I'll take my chances with the private sector. At least there's a theoretical choice to change what company I work with. There's no choice in what government I'm forced to work with, even in theory.
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.
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.
Does Google have an army, air force, navy and marines and nukes?
Naturally, a statist wants to regulate private enterprise.
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 following are often not even interested in online reviews and map placement to prevent overcrowding. How many online reviews suffer from poor customer service, long lines, long wait times, etc. Find places not on Google maps.
The truth shall set you free!
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 infrastructure from them as well. So if say your local Cable provider decides that your home or business isn't worth maintaining, without regulations, they will just cut you off, and you will be SOL. And because they have a captive audience they really don't care about getting a bad repuation.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
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.
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 ...
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"We can't compete so we need the government to step in."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This is understandable in a way given the almost 100% market share for search that google enjoys in Europe vs the US 68% or so and the European (especially German) fondness for regulation... no matter how alien it seems to me. Even if it is a bad idea / good idea or whatever lets be honest, if Germany wants to regulate their google.de TLD do any of us outside of Germany really care?
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? How many competing food guides must exist before Zagat does not have a monopoly simply by dint of how many people use it? Why must the Zagat guide seek out and find your eatery to list it, as opposed to you providing the information that the Zagat guide wants?
Your complaint that you can't 'quit' using the advertising channel that customers choose to pay attention to does not confer magical monopoly status on that channel. There are many others. While you may not like that you have do deal with one particular one, it is your customers who get to chose which advertising channel to pay attention to, not you who get to dictate what the advertising channel does.
The Google Dance. IMO- What a horrible phrase to try and describe the situation. How does this change in any way indicate a "dance"?
Deutsche Telekom is still very close to the German government. This guy is a mouthpiece for the Merklin. Germany/EU envies Google's power and its function as a gateway to the web. They already forced their "right to be forgotten" censorship law on Google, this is the prelude to the next step.
Here's a better idea:
We create standard internet protocols to handle the functions that Google and Facebook currently provide as walled-garden services. They are only exploiting a gap in the functionality of the Internet. If the Internet caught up with user expectations and provided these functions natively, we would not have a problem.
No regulation required.
Company's name is Deutsche Telekom.
OP wasn't AC you moron
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...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
It's a shame really. That would have been an infinitely more fascinating article.
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 has a *right* to either appear on google's search or to a particular page-ranking.
and from a pragmatic POV, changing the ranking algorithms is the only way that google can keep ahead of SEO spammers and the like who would otherwise make search engines complely fucking useless because you'd never find anything but spammed crap.
it's not a binary choice to regular google or to not regulate "Google-level internet entities" - of course they should be regulated, humans need protection against corporations, but it's a matter of which things can and should be regulated and which should not.
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 they hate power, any power, whoever has power they will rail against."
Citizens have the illusion of control over the government
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.
Microsoft, Oracle, or in the pas MySpace?
Your Average Joe
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...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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/...
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.
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".
At what point does the Zagat's guide turn into such a monopoly?
September 8, 2011, the day they were acquired by Google?
Deutsche Telekom tried twice to build "Google killers" with millions in government subsidies as part of the Quaero project. First,t hey picked a major fight with the French, then they got more government funding, and still failed to come up with something competitive.
Since Telekom has shown to be utterly incapable of competing with better products, even with massive subsidies, they are now going to German regulators and trying to win in the market through lobbying and politicking. What a bunch of losers.
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 hypocrisy right now.)
Imagine for a moment that Google was state regulated. It would end up like the banks, telcos or cable industry: the worst conceivable combination of predatory monopoly capitalism and government bureaucracy. The ability of regulated monopolies to warp the structure of regulation is unstoppable. So you get events like the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, followed a government bailout, where not one banker was even charged with a criminal offense, much less convicted. All the scum sucking bankers ended up with more money then they started with after the dust cleared. And we are no closer to effective regulation then before 2008. It's like instead of busting drug cartels, we privatized the Boarder Patrol and outsourced it to drug runners.
So regulating Google is a Bad Idea. Even though "Don't do Evil" is a lie they tell themselves, we are all a lot better off with an independent Google (and Facebook) then we would be if they got their hooks into the government.
Why is Snark Required?
Keep telling yourself that...
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.
The truth shall set you free!
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?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada