can be argued that it was in the best interests of its users and faithful to the product's original mission If you're willing to pay the tens of millions of do

can be argued that it was in the best interests of its users and faithful to the product's original mission If you're willing to pay the tens of millions of dollars and take the PR hit that is a government anti-trust lawsuit, you may eventually have the privilege of making that argument before a federal judge, who probably isn't technology literate enough to comprehend it. Let's face facts here, this conversation goes over the heads of 80% of internet users. The judge is going to see "the federal government accuses them of restraining this site's trade by removing them from the search index, and Google admits to it" and then that's the ballgame. Or maybe the government never gets around to suing Google. Or maybe they get a judge who knows this sort of stuff already. But that's still a scenario keeping Google's Legal Dept. up at night.