[HN Gopher] An analysis of the Google antitrust trial
___________________________________________________________________
An analysis of the Google antitrust trial
Author : passwordoops
Score : 316 points
Date : 2023-09-25 09:44 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thebignewsletter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thebignewsletter.com)
| londons_explore wrote:
| The only reason courthouses are public is so the public can
| satisfy themselves that the courts are doing their job in a fair
| way.
|
| That is equally satisfied by having the court proceedings sealed
| _for a given time_ , for example 5 years. By then, the
| information is nearly worthless to a competitor.
| passwordoops wrote:
| "Indeed, Google lawyers have explicitly argued that the judge
| should avoid allowing documents to become public solely because
| it is "clickbait." To put it differently, the search giant
| literally argues material should stay sealed merely because if
| that material is interesting. "
|
| There's nothing about industry secrets. Google's lawyers don't
| want to "embarrass" the company or its execs.
| batch12 wrote:
| > allowing documents to become public solely because it is
| "clickbait."
|
| The irony is, the company makes a lot of money from
| 'clickbait'.
| Jensson wrote:
| Google probably has data of the others bids. If Bing bid
| billions for that spot as well and Google had to outbid them,
| then I think it is fair for Google to bring that up as
| evidence. At the same time Microsoft and Apple probably don't
| want to reveal to the public what actually happened there, so
| it makes sense for the judge to keep that under wraps since
| it isn't related to Google.
|
| Google maybe even signed an agreement to keep that secret, so
| they aren't allowed to reveal evidence about Apple or
| Microsoft to the public, in that case it wouldn't be fair for
| the court to force Google to breach that contract just to
| defend themselves.
| ploum wrote:
| "If you want to hide something, you should not be doing it in
| the first place"
|
| Eric Schmidt, then Google CEO
| fourthark wrote:
| He meant "you".
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| It isn't even embarrass, it is backlash at lies, hypocrisy
| and contorted justifications that they are ultimately making.
| This judge has no business presiding over this case.
| thfuran wrote:
| In a sane world, the lawyer would be censured for even
| suggesting that.
| __alexs wrote:
| This doesn't really add up to me.
|
| If a currently in progress trial is corrupt, we can prevent the
| harm that a corrupt outcome will cause before it happens. If
| you have to wait 5 years to discover that the trial was corrupt
| then we get at least 5 years of harm out of it. Potentially
| much more because have to retry the case years later will be
| much much more difficult due to evidence destruction.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It depends if the goal is to satisfy the public that courts
| are treating _this case_ fairly, or cases in general fairly.
|
| One might imagine that if any unfairness is discovered, laws
| and processes are adjusted for future cases, but past cases
| will not be re-reviewed.
| eastbound wrote:
| Wait, what should we do if courts are unfair or corrupt?
|
| Because honestly, ...we're way past that point in pretty
| much every country of the world. People are too demoralized
| or weak to do anything about it, but just for intellectual
| curiosity, what is supposed to happen when something
| abnormal happens in our societies?
| grumple wrote:
| > The only reason courthouses are public is so the public can
| satisfy themselves that the courts are doing their job in a
| fair way.
|
| Closing the court sessions eliminates that assurance. We have
| seen multiple times in our history that closed sessions are
| used to break the laws and conventions of this country in a way
| that harms our citizens and degrades their rights (see FISA
| court).
|
| > That is equally satisfied by having the court proceedings
| sealed for a given time, for example 5 years. By then, the
| information is nearly worthless to a competitor.
|
| There's an old saying, "justice delayed is justice denied". If
| in 5 years it turns out this this judge (who has since
| retired/died) violated all common sense and fair administration
| of the law, what happens? Nothing. Hell, even if they are still
| in office, what's the worst that will happen? They resign in
| shame? Meanwhile 300 million American people spend 5 years
| suffering the ill effects of the miscarriage of justice. That
| is not a fair return and it's not justice.
|
| Secrecy is largely incompatible with democracy and justice.
| Think of why wikileaks was so damaging: because our government
| did things that were illegal, immoral, and kept them a secret
| from us. Same thing with the FISA court, which basically
| eliminated the 4th amendment. And at least those instances
| relied on the idea that they were special needs due to foreign
| intelligence requirements and security; Google's only argument
| is that they might lose money.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > The only reason courthouses are public is so the public can
| satisfy themselves that the courts are doing their job in a
| fair way.
|
| Don't agree. One purpose of public trials is to show the public
| how much the authorities disapprove of <criminal act X>. That
| is, public trials are intrinsically show-trials.
|
| A second purpose is to punish the defendant for pleading Not
| Guilty (and/or warn others of the consequences of such a plea);
| even if you are innocent, your actions will be paraded in
| public, and subjected to the harshest possible criticism.
| spandextwins wrote:
| How much do I get? Oh right, just another shakedown.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| > _I am not anyone that understands the industry and the markets
| in the way that you do. And so I take seriously when companies
| are telling me that if this gets disclosed, it's going to cause
| competitive harm._
|
| Wait. What? An "anti-trust" trial against one of the five
| trillion dollar company in the world abusing its monopoly power
| is taken _seriously_ on its claim it could cause "competitive
| harm"? Catch 22.
|
| I guess the competitive harm is political in nature. The real
| competition seems to be China. The rationalization one of being a
| "strong" united front against an authoritarian system. So, the
| judicial system needs to subordinate itself to that power
| constellation. Ultimately succumbing to the authoritarian logic.
|
| By excluding the public in order to not produce "clickbait" just
| furthers the growing mistrust in institutions which then in turn
| necessitates more "secrecy" as to not to "confuse" the public ...
|
| This mindset exemplified by the likes of Eric Schmidt reminds me
| of Edward Teller's role in the nuclear arms race. Surely,
| brilliant people with a lot of valuable input but I wouldn't
| fully trust their judgment.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > Wait. What? An "anti-trust" trial against one of the five
| trillion dollar company in the world abusing its monopoly power
| is taken seriously on its claim it could cause "competitive
| harm"? Catch 22.
|
| I don't see the catch 22? Google is entitled to a legal
| presumption of innocence like any other organization, so the
| court can't yet make decisions based on the premise that it
| _is_ abusing its alleged monopoly power. It's important for
| courts to avoid the perception that merely being the target of
| a lawsuit is a punishment, although of course in many ways it
| is.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| I'm not saying that they are guilty.
|
| But the judge shouldn't be completely oblivious of Alphabet's
| past history and its role as a "key market player" and just
| taking the claims at face value.
|
| The argumentation doesn't sound very balanced tbh. More like:
| that's way above my league and I don't want to be the one
| jeopardizing national security, so I have to trust you on
| that.
|
| In a sense, this is an admission that Alphabet is way too
| "big" already to be treated as an "ordinary company" which
| makes a due process a more complicated matter,
| euphemistically speaking. And I get that but as the substack
| article points out: atm right from the start it plays out way
| too far on Alphabet's terms.
|
| That's the way I read it, I might be wrong.
| taeric wrote:
| This was even worse in the case against MS. They were,
| somehow, taken at face value that they would not abuse
| purchasing Activision. For... reasons?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I don't see the catch 22? Google is entitled to a legal
| presumption of innocence like any other organization,
|
| There's no presumption of innocence in civil matters.
|
| Since this is being tried entirely as a civil matter (and not
| as a criminal case, as far as I am aware[1]), there's no
| presumption of innocence, no "beyond reasonable doubt",
| there's only "preponderance of evidence".
|
| [1] Unless it really is being brought to the court by the
| state prosecution, in which case it probably is a criminal
| matter.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| If I need the preponderance of the evidence to find you
| liable, you were presumed not liable. Obviously the
| presumption is not as strong as clear and convincing or
| reasonable doubt, but there's no reason to say that there
| is no presumption of a sense of liability under this
| standard.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| To beat China and their unacceptable values we must become
| china
|
| PS: this was Sarcasm people
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| In practice, what happens is that these values are slowly
| made more acceptable. "Think of the children" to make privacy
| violation more acceptable; "They are terrorists" to make
| human rights violations more acceptable; "Drain the swamp" or
| "The election was stolen" to make insurrection more
| acceptable; "Protect our women" to make transphobia more
| acceptable. That kinda thing. It's happening everywhere.
| hubco wrote:
| [flagged]
| psd1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| hubco wrote:
| They are men, whether you like it or not. Men who desire
| to be women, or who just call themselves women, for
| whatever reason.
|
| No-one should be compelled to accept a false, reality-
| denying belief as if it were true. This absurd assertion
| that some men are women is a particularly pernicious
| falsehood.
| thfuran wrote:
| [flagged]
| hubco wrote:
| > > namely that a subset of men should be allowed to
| disregard women's boundaries and consent with impunity
|
| > What?
|
| Men who desire to be women forcing their way into women's
| and girls' spaces, and who keep advocating for the law to
| be changed, where it isn't already, so they can keep
| getting away with this.
| NickC25 wrote:
| No, we must beat them by showing the world that there's a
| better way. Unfortunately, allowing our corporations to take
| a shit on the rules of law and get their way in court because
| "trade secrets" is more like China than we'd like to admit.
|
| This is akin to "all animals are equal, but some animals are
| more equal than others". Special rules for special
| corporations who cry "trade secrets" when called out for bad
| behavior. Yuck.
| saynay wrote:
| Strictly speaking, it is over the companies monopoly in search.
| Google also lives in other markets where there is competition,
| so this may be about those markets not search.
| Jensson wrote:
| But Google probably have a lot of data about their
| competitors that they would like to present to the judges.
| Making that data public would make it look like Google is
| smearing the competition, I can see why a judge would agree
| to keep that secret.
|
| For example, Apple maybe had an auction to bid for default
| search spot on their platforms. Google bid the highest as we
| know, but we don't know what the competition bid and Google
| probably want to present that as evidence that this was just
| a normal auction similar to bidding for advertisement spots.
| For example, if Bing bid 90% of the current Google bid, then
| it is pretty clear that Google wasn't paying Apple to keep
| competition out but rather paying Apple for a premium spot in
| a fair market.
|
| Nobody argues that Apple is anti competitive when they pay
| Google to put ads on top of certain search results, so why
| would Google be anti competitive when they pay Apple for a
| premium spot? They don't pay Apple to keep others out, just
| for the premium spot, you can still use other search engines.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Google is a monopoly in most of those verticals too.
| taeric wrote:
| A common antitrust concern is about leveraging a monopoly in
| one area to gain oversized advantage in another.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Yes, but that doesn't give the DOJ a free ride to use an
| antitrust trial in one area to punish a company in other
| more competitive areas by revealing trade secrets. That is
| extrajudicial, and not far off from a dirty cop harassing
| an innocent party _" You may beat the rap, but you can't
| beat the ride"_. The trial itself should not be a
| punishment under a half-decent justice system.
| taeric wrote:
| But companies also shouldn't get a free ride with "trade
| secret." At some level, they are free to pick their
| defense.
|
| And, charity to the actual ruling, I'm assuming that
| better arguments were made behind closed doors to get to
| this point? I don't think it should be a problem to have
| parts of the process closed, at all. I do find it odd to
| have such a large blockout, though.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > But companies also shouldn't get a free ride with
| "trade secret"
|
| They don't - the judge determines what should be sealed
| by weighing public interest against potential harm. In
| this instance, the article author disagrees with the
| judge's decisions.
| [deleted]
| Izmaki wrote:
| I love the irony of sealing the majority of a trial (2 3/4 of 5
| days) about anti-trust. :)
| meepmorp wrote:
| What's ironic about it?
| mistercheph wrote:
| A name that serves as a nice preface for the question.
| [deleted]
| quantum_state wrote:
| Google might just claim a public trial would harm national
| security ... not just clickbait...
| bogwog wrote:
| If our national security depends on Google, then we're all
| going to end up on killedbygoogle.com
| inetknght wrote:
| If there is a national security interest then it is up to the
| government to prove it, not Google.
| summerlight wrote:
| The title seems to be a bit misleading. I was anticipating a
| legal analysis of the case, but the actual title "How to Hide a
| $2 Trillion Antitrust Trial" seems to be more focused on
| complaints about its lack of transparency. Yeah, lots of things
| are hidden behind the curtain but we still have lots of useful
| materials for analysis?
| passwordoops wrote:
| That was the title when I posted, but it looks like it was
| changed. Not sure why, because as you mention the focus is more
| on the lack of transparency
| summerlight wrote:
| Thanks for clarification. I guess the author wanted more
| "public attention"... Though the new title feels a bit
| clickbaity but arguably more faithful to the overall theme
| now.
| victor106 wrote:
| It almost seems like Judge Mehta is somehow complicit in this.
| Judges can also be corrupt, they are just human.
| [deleted]
| kumarvvr wrote:
| This is the most important news on the internet today.
|
| Google has completely transformed itself into this uber-corp,
| that is hell bent on absolute dominance.
|
| Wow. I am an avid internet user, very much interested in
| technology / business / social media, and I was not aware of
| this. Sure, there is an anti-trust court case here and there, and
| I almost always seem to see EU has fined FAANG companies some
| millions of dollars for their breach of trust / security /
| monopoly etc. But, the way this is going on is amazing.
|
| To ponder, why does the judge have to put the onus on Google,
| when he admits he doesn't know? Is there no mechanism where the
| judge says a panel of MBA / senior technocrats / VC's or the like
| be able to advise him on the matter?
| [deleted]
| hotstickyballs wrote:
| Which part of the tech industry would want to do so? Every
| VC/tech exec wants a monopoly like Google.
| choppaface wrote:
| They want to build a monopoly and then sell it and collect
| rent from it. They don't want to deal with consequences.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Never mind sealed sessions - try secret trials.
|
| There was a trial in the U.K. a little over a decade ago over
| whether a certain media mogul was engaging in cartel behaviour -
| and apart from those parties directly involved in the trial, and
| a few others such as myself who have come to know about the
| matter through one of the parties involved, nobody even knows it
| happened. It was deemed to be in the public interest to try him,
| but it was also deemed a risk to national security for any part
| of it to be public. He was evidently acquitted, or perhaps
| proceedings still drag on, with him wagering on a visit from the
| reaper before judgement is passed - oh irony.
|
| There was a rather incredible turn of events where one of the
| parties who had been asked/told to be involved tried to go to the
| press (not owned by said mogul), and was promptly ratted out to
| the government, and the prime minister of the day then went on
| the ten o'clock news to denounce them, bringing their rather
| comfortable cosy-to-the-establishment life to a crashing end.
| They became a national hate figure overnight.
|
| Really, we don't even know what we don't know -- at least in this
| case we know that antitrust proceedings are underway.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Getting something sealed in the UK courts is a surefire way to
| get it on the front page of the Irish papers the next day.
| Keeping secrets by decree is very difficult these days.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| There is no verifiable way for you to make that claim.
| retube wrote:
| > but it was also deemed a risk to national security for any
| part of it to be public
|
| Surely it's OK to keep secret if it WAS a matter of national
| security? Quite possibility that is open to debate in this
| case, but it seems sensible at least to have this provision in
| law?
| ghusto wrote:
| Why all the secrecy on your part though? I can't see any reason
| you wouldn't tell us all names involved.
| maffydub wrote:
| If the case was subject to reporting restrictions (which
| seems quite possible given what he says), it might be illegal
| for him to tell us the names.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Not OP, but I assume if he's in the UK, you take it for
| granted that all communications are monitored and big brother
| is everywhere. Ergo naming and shaming here runs the risk of
| the ire of those protecting said mogul...
|
| This is how democracy dies in the darkness
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I remember throughout my years that London had a
| (negatively) impressive amount of cameras
| (https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-
| by...)
|
| I don't know how it started, but their own "war on terror"
| must have helped to hit that top spot.
|
| Monitoring internet is just the same. "Eyes everywhere".
| The technology changed (people walking on the street vs
| people browsing the internet), but the practice remains.
|
| And to show where the focus is (and it's not to serve and
| protect) the amount of corruption in the UK police (even
| rapists & murderers) are only caught after years and years,
| and only after the victims go through hell and high water
| to get justice. (that last paragraph is a bit provocative -
| but true)
| rsynnott wrote:
| The US actually had more per capita (world rankings are
| US, China, UK, Germany), though they may be more
| _visible_ in the UK (particularly after the GDPR, there
| are differences in rules on covert surveillance). As I
| understand it, they're nearly all privately owned in both
| the US and UK, and their installation is driven more by
| insurance company requirements than anything else.
| garblegarble wrote:
| Remember that the overwhelming majority of these cameras
| in London are privately owned and operated by shopkeepers
| and homeowners, it's not a massive state-operated
| surveillance network. They usually have extremely poor
| image quality and are hooked up to fixed local tape/hard
| drive recording rather than networked.
|
| With that said, there are still a lot of state-operated
| cameras. Mostly to make money from traffic infraction
| fines, curiously that's one area where governments don't
| ever seem to cut police funding :-)
| jjgreen wrote:
| As a hint as to surveillance in the UK, a poster which
| appeared on the London Underground some years ago. This
| is/was not ironic.
|
| https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-
| online/po...
| XTHK wrote:
| Now the hard popup asking about cookies on that page _is_
| very ironic!
| ghusto wrote:
| To be fair I was being somewhat obtuse. It's fairly obvious
| he's talking about Rupert Murdoch, but my point was to
| highlight that believing that big brother is watching us,
| means they don't even have to be watching us.
|
| OP could easily get away with spewing every detail right
| here without getting caught, but the constant fear of
| surveillance stops her. _This too_ is how democracy dies in
| the darkness.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I assume it is that:
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-
| news/rupert-m...
|
| "after last week's emergence of secretly recorded comments he
| made about bribes in the British newspaper industry and the
| phone-hacking probes."
|
| I remember this happening at the time. I don't follow 'media
| news' much, but I do remember the scandal due to the
| 'recording' and how they were going about recording calls,
| SMS, etc.
| tester756 wrote:
| How is this even allowed?
|
| Should the judge and overseeing team be punished?
| safety1st wrote:
| Yeah it blows my mind that the judge has the ability to do
| this. As the article says he is basically sealing stuff on the
| basis that Google said it could be "clickbait" if it was in the
| media.
|
| It's early days yet but this is so far shaping up to be the
| weakest anti-trust trial yet - weaker than Microsoft and many
| prior trials, because of Judge Mehta.
|
| Fuck this guy. Amit Mehta exemplifies the problem with the
| system, and the failure of the American government. He is a
| disgrace to his position.
| tempodox wrote:
| I have to wonder how much he was payed.
| jojobas wrote:
| [flagged]
| tester756 wrote:
| Haha, I've actually been thinking about this but was too
| scared to post such a theory on HN
|
| partially because it doesn't mean anything since India is
| huge...
| jojobas wrote:
| They were born some 2000 km and many language families
| apart, and probably would have little in common if they
| met with no pretext. Who knows though, right?
| roadbuster wrote:
| > How is this even allowed?
|
| Nixon v. Warner Communications (1978)
|
| If a company feels the need to reveal their trade secrets in
| court to make their case, but ultimately wants to maintain
| protection over the trade secret itself, what option would you
| provide them?
|
| Obama's signature of the Defend Trade Secrets Act in 2016 is
| also a recent indicator the executive branch has no interest in
| the breach of trade secrets. It would be astonishingly
| difficult for a trial judge to say, "you know, I think the
| public has an overriding, vested interest in knowing the
| internal details of Google's technologies."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defend_Trade_Secrets_Act
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is the key factor that I think a lot of HN pundits are
| not understanding on this topic.
|
| The answer to "How can the judge do that" is: judges have
| broad leeway over how they interpret "fairness" in their
| courtroom. It is incumbent upon the parties in the lawsuit to
| disagree with the judge; silence implies assent.
|
| So the question people should be asking isn't "How can the
| judge be allowed to do that?" It has a simple answer. "He's a
| judge and this makes the most sense to him."
|
| The interesting question is "Why isn't the DOJ challenging
| the judge's seals in the interest of public knowledge?" And
| here you have your answer: the Executive over the past
| several years has seen fit to lean in the direction that it
| is not necessary to flay trade secrets out into the public
| sphere (a harm that cannot be reversed) to conduct a
| prosecution. It is, in their eyes, a better pursuit of
| justice.
|
| (If the public disagrees, recourse is through making it an
| electoral issue for choosing President or pressuring the
| legislature to pass a law that constrains a judge's authority
| on protecting trade secrets).
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > what option would you provide them?
|
| I would offer them this choice:
|
| 1. Present your evidence in public, and let it be tested by
| the court;
|
| 2. Keep your trade secrets secret, and find some other line
| of defence.
|
| Secret courts are not compatible with public justice. The
| UK's Family Court Division is a notorious example, and UK
| jurists are (slowly) coming to acknowledge that secrecy in
| matters of children, divorce and so on is corrosive to public
| confidence in the Family Courts.
| jsnell wrote:
| What's under discussion at the moment isn't Google's
| defense, which AFAIK hasn't yet started, right? It's the
| evidence and testimony being presented by the plaintiffs.
| They can get access to trade secrets as part of discovery,
| and are incentivized to make as much of it public as
| possible. There's just no downside to it for them.
| taeric wrote:
| Aren't there already procedures in place to challenge
| particular evidence over concerns like this?
| jsnell wrote:
| Yes, there's procedures for redacting evidence and
| sealing testimony. Those procedures are being followed
| here, and leading to an outcome the author of the article
| doesn't like.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| And when someone (a competitor) turns around and starts
| (frivolously) suing every company claiming that their
| supposed "trade secrets" are illegal activities?
| mistercheph wrote:
| Here's some background on the legal system in America
| that I think you are missing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Federal_Rules_of_Civil_Procedu...
|
| In particular, rules 11 and 12:
| https://www.federalrulesofcivilprocedure.org/frcp/title-
| iii-...
|
| https://www.federalrulesofcivilprocedure.org/frcp/title-
| iii-...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| How do I prove that your claim is frivolous without
| revealing my trade secrets?
|
| (Generally this is not particularly different from patent
| trolling, which is also clearly a violation of the civil
| procedure rules, but took special laws and _years_ to get
| even the most egregious people, like prenda, punished)
| Hizonner wrote:
| > If a company feels the need to reveal their trade secrets
| in court to make their case, but ultimately wants to maintain
| protection over the trade secret itself, what option would
| you provide them?
|
| They can present their evidence in open court, or they can
| lose. That should be their option.
|
| Their "loss" of trade secrets is not the law's, the
| government's, or the public's problem.
| NickC25 wrote:
| > _If a company feels the need to reveal their trade secrets
| in court to make their case, but ultimately wants to maintain
| protection over the trade secret itself, what option would
| you provide them?_
|
| I wouldn't give them any options, as they are on trial for a
| reason. Corporate America can't have its cake and eat it too.
| Google is a multi-trillion dollar publicly traded
| corporation, they have significant cultural, political,
| technological and economic power. They are in court due to
| abuse of one (or more?) of those powers. Part of the trade
| off of making your C-Suite, founders, and major shareholders
| multi-billionaires via public markets is that you have to be
| accountable to the public.
|
| If you're being sued for abuse of power, you can't just tell
| the judge "shhh, it's a trade secret, it can't be mentioned
| in public court, let's keep it so secret that most people
| don't even know we're in court, much less why we're in court"
| and expect to get away with it. Or, maybe you can....which is
| equally if not more disturbing in a democratic society. We're
| not China.
|
| If you're a mom-and-pop startup or small firm, sure,
| revealing trade secrets might spell doom for you. But you're
| not Google. I understand why it's not good to have to reveal
| trade secrets. But if that trade secret has landed you in
| court, you need to be accountable to the people that utilize
| your products, own your stock, do business with you, etc...
|
| Granted, if there is a legitimate national security concern
| here, I understand the need for secrecy. But I highly doubt
| there's technology in this case that would rip a massive hole
| in our national security readiness or long term technology
| strategy.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > I wouldn't give them any options, as they are on trial
| for a reason
|
| > They are in court due to abuse of one (or more?) of those
| powers.
|
| "If he weren't a drug dealer, why did the cops arrest him?"
|
| Even the corporations have a right to a fair trial.
| Innocent-until-proven-guilty applies to them too.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Innocent until proven guilty does not apply in civil
| trials.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Even still, you can't use "They wouldn't be in this court
| if they hadn't done _something_ wrong " as part of the
| evidence for the 'preponderance of evidence' standard.
| NickC25 wrote:
| > _" If he weren't a drug dealer, why did the cops arrest
| him?"_
|
| Because he's been caught several times using drugs out in
| the open, has been caught numerous times selling drugs,
| and his linkedin profile says he's an "alternative
| medicine distributor" and formerly a "streets
| pharmacist". If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck,
| has ducklings, and swims in the water, it's clearly a
| moose, or a t-rex, right?
|
| Let's be crystal clear here. Google has most likely
| broken a number of antitrust laws. That is why they are
| on trial. Google has faced antitrust suits previously.
|
| > _Even the corporations have a right to a fair trial._
|
| You're making my point for me, so thanks. Everyone is
| entitled to a fair, public trial decided upon by a jury
| of their peers. A corporation trying their damnedest to
| pretend that they aren't on trial and aren't in legal
| crosshairs, while also saying "oh no you can't disclose
| any evidence it's all trade secrets and will cause harm
| to our corporation and our shareholders" Yeah, no. They
| have the right to a fair and public trial. That's it. If
| they didn't want to have to tell the world about what
| they are doing, they could have pursued a whole bunch of
| avenues to prevent disclosure of it WAY before it got to
| this point.
|
| Alternatively, they could have just not gone and done the
| actions that caused the government to bring the lawsuit.
| It's not like shareholders got together and said "Hey
| Google, you MUST do actions X, Y, and Z, even though we
| know they will trigger an antitrust suit that you most
| likely will lose, or else we will fire your whole board".
| That didn't happen either.
|
| EDIT: Should also disclose that within the last 6 months,
| I held Google stock and LEAP options. I no longer hold
| positions in Google, although I still am a paid user of
| multiple of Google's services, including Gmail, Google
| Workspace for Business, and Youtube TV.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has
| ducklings, and swims in the water, it's clearly a moose,
| or a t-rex, right?
|
| (a) we have a whole legal philosophy based around "If
| we're gonna deprive it of duck-related rights, we'd
| better make damn sure it isn't a t-rex or a moose."
|
| (b) remember, what these rules protect us from is the
| government having arbitrary power to jail people by
| calling us ducks.
|
| > Everyone is entitled to a fair, public trial decided
| upon by a jury of their peers
|
| Who owns the right there? It's not the government; it's
| the plaintiff and defendant. If both concur on a non-
| public trial, the Constitution doesn't force the trial to
| _be_ public. The right to a public trial is a waivable
| right.
|
| ... which is really the crux of the matter. The DOJ has a
| right to ask for a public trial here also; if it 's not
| public, that implies they have not. They really should be
| the ones people are up in arms about if we think there's
| a public interest in publicizing the trial proceedings,
| as they represent the public in these proceedings.
|
| In this case, Google argues that the loss of trade
| secrets in the act of defending themselves constitutes
| irreparable harm, the court agrees, and the DOJ doesn't
| appear to have dissented. That's enough to settle the
| issue for this case.
|
| > Alternatively, they could have just not gone and done
| the actions that caused the government to bring the
| lawsuit
|
| You are, again, assuming the DOJ's case is legal truth
| before they've made it.
|
| The easiest way for a corporation to never open itself to
| lawsuit is to do nothing. Obviously, we don't want to
| incentivize that as the common outcome; we lose our whole
| economy if we do. So the law tries to find a balance. In
| the case of this antitrust suit, I think there's a good
| case to be made that the DOJ is trying to bend precedent
| to make something illegal that the law was not previously
| understood to make illegal; the idea that Google has a
| "search monopoly" is a very frog-boiling argument of
| reinterpretation of law over the history of the company.
|
| (If we're doing full disclosures: I do own Google stock
| still. I expect them to beat this lawsuit and then I'll
| cash out after the victory bubble).
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > what option would you provide them?
|
| this happens every day in business trials. The judge has to
| show judgment (see what I did there?) about what is really a
| trade secret. Both sides get to present their arguments.
|
| In this case, Mehta has showed rotten judgment.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Yeah but the argument from Google isn't on trade secrets.
| They literally argued it's nothing more than clickbait.
|
| Everyone knows they already breach anti trust by paying Apple
| $2B, for example. The contents of the documents detail how
| they got there
| remram wrote:
| Was it necessary to redact this much of the trial though?
| This seems way too much.
| bdjcvuy wrote:
| [dead]
| passwordoops wrote:
| 40-plus years of a legal philosophy that bows to corporate
| power will do this. I'm sure even if the judge made it public,
| Google's lawyers can appeal to a higher court and get it sealed
| [deleted]
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Because it could harm competition if they don't.
|
| No ?
| passwordoops wrote:
| A) In the article they mention Google's lawyers said making
| things public would only serve more "clickbait" to embarrass
| the company... so their problem is people would talk about
| how Google execs actively flaunted anti-trust rules
|
| B) Competition? Google? Seriously?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I don't think we should assume that what the article says
| is a complete or accurate summary of the arguments. (Not
| that I agree with the outcome)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| btilly wrote:
| The article massively overstates the impact of the 1998 Microsift
| trial. What Microsoft got was a slap on the wrist that they
| considered just a cost of doing business. Netscape died, and
| Microsoft's behavior remained the same.
|
| Microsoft didn't blink until acround 2008 when the EU cases
| finally fined them enough that they blinked. See, for example,
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-eu/eu-fines-mic....
| jojobas wrote:
| He's talking about humiliation from dragging Microsoft's and
| Bill Gates personal brands in the dirt, not actual penalty
| adjudicated.
|
| Basically if we had videos of Pichai stuttering and
| unsuccessfully trying to weasel out of sharp questions in every
| news report for a couple of weeks that would perhaps open more
| eyes and hurt Google more than a fine of so many zeroes.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > that would perhaps open more eyes and hurt Google more than
| a fine of so many zeroes.
|
| Because that _definitely_ worked with Microsoft, right?
|
| I don't think most Americans could tell you what Netscape is,
| let alone why Microsoft was sued or why it should have been
| humiliating.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Because that definitely worked with Microsoft, right?
|
| Right. Gary Reback, the lawyer for Netscape back then, has
| said that Google's very existence depends on the Microsoft
| trial.
|
| As for Americans' ignorance: irrelevant. They can't tell
| you what Watergate was, either.
| btilly wrote:
| I disagreed with him back then as well. In the public
| comment on the Netscape settlement, I was one of the
| responses against it that the DoJ added to the trial.
|
| Here was the position that I had then. Microsoft's
| documented behavior on previous antitrust cases meant
| that this settlement would not deter future abuse. And I
| laid out specifically why that decree would not work.
|
| I stand by that opinion now.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| OK. His statement (and yours) rely on counterfactuals:
| what would MS have done had they _not_ been sued? There
| is no way to resolve that. Arguing would be tedious.
| btilly wrote:
| In what way does my statement rely on counterfactuals?
|
| I argued circa 2001-2002 that Microsoft had a history of
| legal brinkmanship and continued anticompetitive behavior
| through past consent decrees, and nothing in the Netscape
| decision would dissuade them.
|
| The EU case in 2004-2008 demonstrated that, following the
| Netscape decision, Microsoft had not been dissuaded. They
| continued their anticompetitive behavior and legal
| brinkmanship, and this was confirmed by internal emails.
| This fact was why the EU penalties were so high. The
| judge explicitly wished the fines to be sufficient that
| Microsoft could not continue to view antitrust consent
| decrees as just a cost of doing business.
|
| His argument that Microsoft was dissuaded is indeed a
| counterfactual argument. It is a counterfactual argument
| that contradicts facts established in later court cases.
|
| This is why, over 20 years later, I stand by my previous
| belief. I think that my reasoning then was sound. And my
| predictions were validated by evidence introduced in
| later cases.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| [flagged]
| btilly wrote:
| If you really wanted to not go there, you shouldn't have
| characterized my argument in a false way. And when your
| mistake was pointed out, you should have acknowledged the
| point.
|
| Go ahead. Avoid the tedium of responding. It will avoid
| me the unpleasantness of further dishonest evasion on
| your part.
|
| Meanwhile the facts remain these. From 1990 through 2011,
| Microsoft was continually being sued by or under consent
| decree in the USA for antitrust violations. From 1993
| through 2013, the same was true in the EU. This is in
| addition to a long list of lawsuits from companies that
| their behavior harmed.
|
| All evidence from external behavior and internal emails
| in court says that their attitude did not change until
| 2008.
|
| This is not a counterfactual argument. And it provides
| good reason to believe that the 1998 publicity of having
| Bill Gates in court did not deter Microsoft from further
| antitrust actions.
| edgyquant wrote:
| They did not falsely characterize your argument. They are
| correct that it hinges on knowing the future when no one
| could do.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You really want an unpleasant argument, don't you? Maybe
| someone else here will give you one. Have a nice day.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I mean, in the world where they _did_ get sued, IE
| existed and was annoying for the better part of a decade
| and then succeeded by two more first-party Microsoft
| browsers. It was right to sue Microsoft, but it also
| evidently did not fix the state of browser hegemony. The
| precedent was weak, and arguably more harmful than
| leaving it up for further deliberation. You can feel the
| impact on pretty much any FAANG software platform.
| rashkov wrote:
| As per the article, the significance is that Microsoft did
| not use its platform dominance to crush an upstart google
| btilly wrote:
| I understood it very differently at the time.
|
| Microsoft felt that it had won the browser wars so
| thoroughly that they dismantled most of their IE team and
| took their eyes off the ball. Nobody else could make a
| competitive browser, and therefore nobody could add
| browser features that would undermine the importance of
| Windows for applications. They didn't realize that they
| already had added the key feature for the Outlook team.
|
| The first real use of XMLHttpRequest was Gmail in 2004.
| Most people just thought of it as a cute trick. It wasn't
| until Google Maps and the coining of the term AJAX that
| people thought differently. Microsoft, of course, had
| already been hit with the 2004 EU decree, and kept its
| eyes off the ball. By the time Microsoft paid attention,
| everyone was using it, Firefox was competitive with IE,
| Safari wasn't too far behind, and Google was already
| working on Chrome. But by then it was too late. Microsoft
| didn't have the IE team, and had been shocked at the EU
| penalties.
|
| Therefore I give the credit for Microsoft not crushing
| Google to the EU antitrust, and not the USA antitrust.
| Which really did have no teeth. As can be seen by their
| efforts to anticompetitively promote Windows Media
| Player.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Funny enough, XMLHttpRequest[0] was conceived because
| Microsoft needed to build out a web client for
| Exchange[1], which was a precursor to Gmail in many ways.
| In absolute terms, Gmail had more users and showcased the
| possibilities of web apps more broadly, however Outlook
| for the web in 2001-2004 was pretty sophisticated for its
| time
|
| [0]: Though it was called ActiveXObject for a time
|
| [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090130092236/http://ww
| w.alexho...
| btilly wrote:
| That's what I was referring to with, _They didn 't
| realize that they already had added the key feature for
| the Outlook team._
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > He's talking about humiliation from dragging Microsoft's
| and Bill Gates personal brands in the dirt, not actual
| penalty adjudicated.
|
| Yeah, like Trump's Access Hollywood tape...
|
| At that huge scale whatever topic except for maybe CP ends up
| becoming a 50-50 split with fans loving the character and his
| brand even more and haters conversely hating it even more
| too.
|
| That's because when people that you normally hate side
| against [insert divisive character] then the choice is to
| automatically jump on his bandwagon and viceversa. So at such
| scales it rapidly escalates to a 50-50 split or thereabout.
|
| The best you can do is to have some sort of marginal victory
| against the character in a winner take all settings (such as
| an election or a supreme court ruling) and hope it
| demoralizes him.
|
| Like when Trump lost the Presidency he was demoralized and
| disappeared for a while, but had he kept his morale high he'd
| have been the Monday Morning armchair shadow President
| critiquing and undermining everything Biden did from his
| Twitter account addressing to the 70M people who voted for
| him
| passwordoops wrote:
| I generally agree with you, but distaste for tech giants is
| one place where there does seem to be overlap across the
| left-right political-sport dichotomy. This falls more along
| class lines and can easily be equated with the Sacklers not
| being punished, government corruption going unpunished, etc
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's an argument for extrajudicial punishment though. If
| anything, that's an argument in favor of sealing the court.
|
| There are good reasons to have open proceedings but providing
| the public more opportunities to spin sound bites into hate-
| mobbing isn't one of them.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I remember this.
|
| This started a wave of lobbying and PR campaigns from industry
| groups that lasted until ~2013 or so stating that the EU was
| going to use its leverage its power to "issue fines to extract
| the wealth of American tech companies because there aren't
| enough European ones". Worded more eloquently (though I can't
| recall exactly how, I think they may have said something about
| the "EU Technology Tax" or something as an allusion to this),
| but never the less, its what they were conveying
|
| This was targeted at gaining sympathy for the US government to
| intervene with the EU to make it more friendly for American
| tech companies, and more specifically, big ones.
|
| I wish I could find the webpage ads I saw around this. It was
| not a good look.
| chung8123 wrote:
| That is hard to predict and would be a rewrite of history.
| Microsoft operated their business with handcuffs for years and
| it definitely allowed Apple to make a lot of advances in
| bundling things that Microsoft was too scared to do.
| fourthark wrote:
| It was the exposure of Microsoft's business practices to
| daylight that had the greatest effect, IMO.
| btilly wrote:
| If that had a great effect, why did they continue violating
| antitrust law in the ways documented in the EU?
|
| It wasn't like their antitrust history started with browsers.
| Their business practices were on display before - for
| instance look at the 1994 consent decree that they signed. Or
| did you think that Netscape was their first antitrust case?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I think it had a huge effect on changing the practices of
| their potential consumers.
|
| I'm aware that Microsoft and Google still have massive
| marketshare, but there's no way of knowing what the world
| would look like if that lawsuit hadn't happened. They
| technically lost in the legal court, but internally may
| have been congratulating themselves because the penalty was
| so small.
|
| But they lost in the court of public opinion. "Everyone
| knows" that Microsoft's modus operandi is "Embrace, extend,
| extinguish" monopoly-building, that IE sucks, that their
| entire platform is anti-user...it's taken decades of
| brilliant work on VS Code, on the .NET stack, and in other
| open source efforts to partially convince some of the
| developer community that they're not entirely evil. And
| honestly, Microsoft's character in all of this is a big
| part of why I daily Firefox on a Linux laptop, and probably
| a big part of why tools like Firefox and Linux exist. A
| significant portion of Google's success may be due to
| people leaving Microsoft's IE (and Bing) and using Chrome
| instead!
|
| Here, "Don't be evil" Google - already somewhat maligned by
| their Adsense tracking cookies, their gradual degradation
| of the Search experience, their habit of canceling beloved
| projects, their own embrace/extend/extinguish model with
| Chrome, and their other actions, could suffer a similar
| character impeachment in this antitrust trial.
|
| It doesn't matter as much whether industry insiders knew
| what their behavior was, or whether they take a financial
| hit, or even whether they're found guilty - what matters
| most is what popular culture paints them to be.
| btilly wrote:
| In what court of public opinion did they lose? Among
| people who were interested in open source 20 years ago?
| Sure! But who else doesn't like them?
|
| The general public of people our age thinks good things
| about Microsoft. Even my siblings find my dislike of
| Microsoft bizarre. The only thing about Microsoft that
| most people my age ever hated was Clippy. And even Clippy
| is now generally liked.
|
| And developers under 35 seem to find it bizarre that if I
| call Microsoft the Evil Empire. Just as I once found it
| strange that developers from the 1980s thought of IBM
| that way.
| petsfed wrote:
| Amongst e.g. PC game nerds who really started playing in
| the late 90s, there was always a sort of low-level
| antipathy directed towards Microsoft. It's non-specific,
| and its certainly not actionable, but there was always a
| little bit of bitterness that "oh, here's a new update to
| windows, how many of my games will it break?" Couple that
| with "I have to buy a copy of windows when I buy a new
| motherboard?!".
| no_wizard wrote:
| Things like "M$" and "Micro$oft" (and many other ways
| Microsoft was lampooned that I can't recall) where common
| when I was _in highschool_ (~2008). Not with _everyone_ ,
| but any of the tech literate kids (not even say, the kids
| who made games in their spare time) were aware of these
| things, which by that time, gaming was getting to be more
| mainstream, and there was more exposure to these "in"
| jokes to a different crowd. They seemed to persist well
| passed the sell by date, as it were.
|
| They definitely took a huge hit in public opinion. I'm
| from a middle of nowhere town, its not tech adjacent or
| focused, and these were common online forums where we
| interacted at the time (and by some extension the broader
| public ones).
|
| Even teachers would poke fun at Microsoft from time to
| time, as I recall
| dangus wrote:
| I would put forth an alternative theory with two parts:
| the smaller factor is that Linux was a better for web
| servers than Windows Server and the explosion of the
| business impact of the web sent developers toward
| workflows that played nicely with Linux.
|
| The bigger factor is that smartphones allowed competitors
| to get a reset on the playing field for the consumer
| market.
|
| Mac marketshare was in single digits until the iPhone
| took hold (yes, even after the success of the iPod), and
| we still had Microsoft dominating the market with over
| 80% marketshare as of 2018 (macOS has only hit double
| digit marketshare percentage as of about 2016, roughly
| doubling to over 20% from that time until today).
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-
| sha...
|
| As an edit, maybe I'd add factor number 3: web-based
| business applications. I would say that Google's business
| productivity suite set businesses free to be much more
| platform agnostic, along with other tools that moved from
| installed desktop applications to web.
| [deleted]
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