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Texas is now entering its third day of widespread power outages and, although supplies of electricity are improving, they remain well short of demand. For now, the state's power authority suggests that, rather than restoring power, grid operators will try to shift from complete blackouts to rolling ones. Meanwhile, the state's cold weather is expected to continue for at least another day. How did this happen?

To understand what's going on in Texas, and how things got so bad, you need quite a bit of arcane knowledge—including everything from weather and history to the details of grid structure and how natural gas contracts are organized. We've gathered details on as much of this as possible, and we also talked to grid expert Jeff Dagle at Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). What follows is an attempt to organize and understand an ongoing, and still somewhat chaotic, situation.

Why is Texas so much worse off?

While other states have seen customers lose power, Texas has been hit the hardest, with far more customers losing power for substantially longer.

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Two separate coalitions of states have filed massive antitrust lawsuits against Google in the past 24 hours, alleging the company abuses its extensive power to force would-be competitors out of the marketplace and harms consumers in the process.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spearheaded the first suit, which nine other states also signed onto. The second suit is led by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, and an additional 36 states and territories signed on.

Antitrust law isn't just about being an illegal monopoly or even about being the dominant firm in your market sector. Although being a literal monopoly, with no available competition of any kind, can put you on the fast track to investigation, the law has broader concerns. Primarily, antitrust investigations are about anticompetitive behavior —in short, how a company uses its power. If you're a big company because everyone likes your stuff best, well, you're a big company, congratulations. But if you got to be the dominant company by cheating somehow—strong-arming other firms in the supply chain; targeted anticompetitive acquisitions; colluding with other firms to manipulate market conditions, and so on—that's a problem.

Enlarge / Oracle's previous headquarters in Redwood City, California. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images )

Oracle is moving its global headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, the company announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California, to Austin, Texas," Oracle wrote in its quarterly SEC filing. "We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work."

The company will continue to maintain an office at its previous headquarters in Redwood City, California, and other offices around the country. Oracle has 135,000 employees.