No, Facebook and Google Are Not Public Utilities

Should Google get front-facing internet platforms should be regulated as common carriers or public utilities has been kicking around for a while. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit in June asking a state court to rule that “Google’s provision of internet search is properly classified as a common carrier and/or public utility under Ohio common law.” He also published an op-ed in The New York Times touting the strategy as a way to stop Google from favoring its own business over competitors who rely on it to reach customers. “As legal touches go, it’s a lot lighter than what antitrust law would demand,” he wrote.  Unfortunately, it’s also a bit light on logic.  “This guy has made such a mess,” said Barbara Cherry, a professor of at the Indiana University Media School who studies common carriage and public utility law. “For a lawyer, it’s particularly sloppy.” The first red flag in the Ohio lawsuit is that it doesn’t even try to define what a common carrier or public utility is. The second red flag is that Yost suggests that the two concepts are interchangeable. All he’s seeking, he wrote in the Times op-ed, is “a simple declaration that, under the law, Google is a public utility, or more generally, a common carrier.” In fact, common carriage is not a more general species of public utility.