Comment by Octoth0rpe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Octoth0rpe | Hacker News Reader

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I can certainly empathize with the farmer's situation and the financial repercussions from an event that clearly isn't their fault at all. It's strange to me though that people think that Apple/Google are _obligated_ to list their business. They're private companies, providing a service to users in exchange for eyeball time. Unless the business is outright paying Apple to be correctly listed/mapped (which I doubt they are), it doesn't seem like they're at all entitled to be listed correctly.

That said, it intuitively feels like they do at least to the farmer from the tone of the article (and similar stories), and to me as well. To me, this means that we're all sort of categorizing such mapping services in the same way that we categorize government services/utilities, and act like we _just for existing_ deserve some form of FRAND treatment from such services.

I wonder if there is some kind of legal framework to be found that could better align how people expect apple/google to interact, with their actual legal obligations towards listed companies (which AFAICT is fuck all).

> That said, it intuitively feels like they do at least to the farmer from the tone of the article (and similar stories), and to me as well.

Listen (but not blindly) to your intuition, because its sense of fairness is keenly honed to allow society to function. Consider the case where Apple doesn't list companies FRAND (and perhaps for a small fee not much larger than their expenses in maintaining a listing) - because of the mass reliance on Apple (or Google) maps, it turns them into either an extortion racket as they extract the highest price they can for good listings, or a blind force of nature, randomly sending small businesses into ruin.

The only way to avoid this is mass organization by people to demand fair treatment. We have a mechanism for such organization: laws. They were used against railway trusts, they're used to prevent power and water companies from discriminating, and they could be used here. Non-physical infrastructure such as maps and yellow pages has the same dangers of monopoly power as railways and power lines.

I don't really think it's that there is a feeling of _obligation_, more so fairness?

I.e. "if they are listing the other businesses then they shouldn't be able to discriminate against my business without good reason."

I think it is important to prevent that from happening.

It’s pretty clear to me why people feel that way - there are basically two mapping platforms in the global west that matter. This duopoly should expect increasing scrutiny of their operations and increasing regulation to ensure fairness in the way they handle things.

In the case of Google, it wasn't entirely privately funded. Look into the history of Keyhole, Inc. and Google Earth / Google Maps - lots of taxpayer dollars went into this.

Imperialism also exists in the digital realm.

Step 1) Aggressively capture some digital space using money and resources few others can match in physical space. Step 2) Control who or what can access this now prevalent realm.

The shortest path (OSPF) helps sustain it.

[OSPF] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Shortest_Path_First

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