Hm. Here's Ohio's definition of a public utility.[1] It might be argued that Google is a telephone company or a messenger company, but that's a stretch.
Regulating Google as a common carrier would make more sense. Common carriers (which, by the way, UPS and FedEx are not, but Union Pacific is) are required to accept and deliver cargoes for anybody who ship according to their posted rates and terms.
But that concept of common carrier implicitly assumes that carrying for party X doesn't harm party Y. You can put a lot of stuff on a train, and if you need to you can run a lot of trains. Shipping is non-rivalous or whatever the economics term is.
But Ohio is pointing out that _ranking_ of results in response to a search (e.g. for flights) is giving preferential placement for Google's own offerings. And only one thing can be shown at the top of the page for "flights to chicago" or whatever. Ranking kind of intrinsically means rivalry.
And further, the common carrier idea is based around serving any customer that pays a posted rate. But the point of search results (as versus ads) is that it's not supposed to be the case that sites need to pay a fee to appear anywhere in the rankings.
I think maybe if the existing laws and categories don't describe this situation well, then we should make new laws and categories.
Seeing what the electric utilities did in terms of essentially buying passage of referenda and laws to their satisfaction in Ohio [1], I'm expecting Google to just open its wallet.
Regulating Google as a common carrier would make more sense. Common carriers (which, by the way, UPS and FedEx are not, but Union Pacific is) are required to accept and deliver cargoes for anybody who ship according to their posted rates and terms.
[1] https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-4905.03