16 ms·

An analysis of the Google antitrust trial

358 points by passwordoops 3y ago

Izmaki 3y ago
I love the irony of sealing the majority of a trial (2 3/4 of 5 days) about anti-trust. :)
- meepmorp 3y ago
  What's ironic about it?
  - mistercheph 3y ago
    A name that serves as a nice preface for the question.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
madaxe_again 3y ago
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.
- ghusto 3y ago
  Why all the secrecy on your part though? I can't see any reason you wouldn't tell us all names involved.
  - passwordoops 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      I remember throughout my years that London had a (negatively) impressive amount of cameras (https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by-number-of-cctv-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 3y ago
        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 3y ago
        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 :-)
tester756 3y ago
How is this even allowed? Should the judge and overseeing team be punished?
- bdjcvuy 3y ago
  [dead]
- passwordoops 3y ago
  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
- safety1st 3y ago
  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.
  - jojobas 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - tester756 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        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?
londons_explore 3y ago
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 3y ago
  "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.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    In a sane world, the lawyer would be censured for even suggesting that.
  - batch12 3y ago
    > allowing documents to become public solely because it is “clickbait.” The irony is, the company makes a lot of money from 'clickbait'.
  - nerpderp82 3y ago
    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.
  - ploum 3y ago
    "If you want to hide something, you should not be doing it in the first place" Eric Schmidt, then Google CEO
    - fourthark 3y ago
      He meant "you".
quantum_state 3y ago
Google might just claim a public trial would harm national security … not just clickbait…
- inetknght 3y ago
  If there is a national security interest then it is up to the government to prove it, not Google.
- bogwog 3y ago
  If our national security depends on Google, then we're all going to end up on killedbygoogle.com
  - the_duke 3y ago
    It's not a big stretch that US agencies extensively use Gmail/Google Docs/etc data to get information on individual ls and for corporate espionage / personal spying
btilly 3y ago
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-microsoft-record-1-35-billion-idUSL2775856920080227 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-eu/eu-fines-mic....
- jojobas 3y ago
  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.
  - JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
    > > 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 3y ago
dav_Oz 3y ago
>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.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  To beat China and their unacceptable values we must become china PS: this was Sarcasm people
  - NickC25 3y ago
    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.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    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.
kumarvvr 3y ago
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?
- hotstickyballs 3y ago
  Which part of the tech industry would want to do so? Every VC/tech exec wants a monopoly like Google.
  - choppaface 3y ago
    They want to build a monopoly and then sell it and collect rent from it. They don’t want to deal with consequences.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
victor106 3y ago
It almost seems like Judge Mehta is somehow complicit in this. Judges can also be corrupt, they are just human.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
summerlight 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
spandextwins 3y ago
How much do I get? Oh right, just another shakedown.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
https://bigtechontrial.com https://bigtechontrial.com https://twitter.com/megangrA https://twitter.com/megangrA https://nitter.poast.org/megangrA https://nitter.poast.org/megangrA
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  https://www.bigtechontrial.com/ https://www.bigtechontrial.com/
leoh 3y ago
I would like to encourage any former or current Googler that believes they can help and would like to call the DOJ, select the option for the switchboard operator, and ask for the Criminal Division at (202) 514-2000.
- leoh 3y ago
  [flagged]
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Other folks attending the trial and reporting on it (via Twitter unfortunately) https://nitter.poast.org/KhushitaVasant https://nitter.poast.org/KhushitaVasant https://twitter.com/KhushitaVasant https://twitter.com/KhushitaVasant https://nitter.poast.org/dibartz https://nitter.poast.org/dibartz https://twitter.com/dibartz https://twitter.com/dibartz https://nitter.poast.org/leah_nylen https://nitter.poast.org/leah_nylen https://twitter.com/leah_nylen https://twitter.com/leah_nylen

358 points by passwordoops 3y ago

Izmaki 3y ago

I love the irony of sealing the majority of a trial (2 3/4 of 5 days) about anti-trust. :)

meepmorp 3y ago
What's ironic about it?
- mistercheph 3y ago
  A name that serves as a nice preface for the question.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

madaxe_again 3y ago

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.

ghusto 3y ago
Why all the secrecy on your part though? I can't see any reason you wouldn't tell us all names involved.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    I remember throughout my years that London had a (negatively) impressive amount of cameras (https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by-number-of-cctv-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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
      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 :-)

tester756 3y ago

How is this even allowed? Should the judge and overseeing team be punished?

bdjcvuy 3y ago
[dead]
passwordoops 3y ago
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
safety1st 3y ago
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.
- jojobas 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tester756 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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?

londons_explore 3y ago

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 3y ago
"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.
- thfuran 3y ago
  In a sane world, the lawyer would be censured for even suggesting that.
- batch12 3y ago
  > allowing documents to become public solely because it is “clickbait.” The irony is, the company makes a lot of money from 'clickbait'.
- nerpderp82 3y ago
  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.
- ploum 3y ago
  "If you want to hide something, you should not be doing it in the first place" Eric Schmidt, then Google CEO
  - fourthark 3y ago
    He meant "you".

quantum_state 3y ago

Google might just claim a public trial would harm national security … not just clickbait…

inetknght 3y ago
If there is a national security interest then it is up to the government to prove it, not Google.
bogwog 3y ago
If our national security depends on Google, then we're all going to end up on killedbygoogle.com
- the_duke 3y ago
  It's not a big stretch that US agencies extensively use Gmail/Google Docs/etc data to get information on individual ls and for corporate espionage / personal spying

btilly 3y ago

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-microsoft-record-1-35-billion-idUSL2775856920080227 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-eu/eu-fines-mic....

jojobas 3y ago
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.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
  > > 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 3y ago

dav_Oz 3y ago

>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.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
To beat China and their unacceptable values we must become china PS: this was Sarcasm people
- NickC25 3y ago
  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.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  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.

kumarvvr 3y ago

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?

hotstickyballs 3y ago
Which part of the tech industry would want to do so? Every VC/tech exec wants a monopoly like Google.
- choppaface 3y ago
  They want to build a monopoly and then sell it and collect rent from it. They don’t want to deal with consequences.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

victor106 3y ago

It almost seems like Judge Mehta is somehow complicit in this. Judges can also be corrupt, they are just human.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

summerlight 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.

spandextwins 3y ago

How much do I get? Oh right, just another shakedown.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

https://bigtechontrial.com https://bigtechontrial.com https://twitter.com/megangrA https://twitter.com/megangrA https://nitter.poast.org/megangrA https://nitter.poast.org/megangrA

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/ https://www.bigtechontrial.com/

leoh 3y ago

I would like to encourage any former or current Googler that believes they can help and would like to call the DOJ, select the option for the switchboard operator, and ask for the Criminal Division at (202) 514-2000.

leoh 3y ago
[flagged]

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

Other folks attending the trial and reporting on it (via Twitter unfortunately) https://nitter.poast.org/KhushitaVasant https://nitter.poast.org/KhushitaVasant https://twitter.com/KhushitaVasant https://twitter.com/KhushitaVasant https://nitter.poast.org/dibartz https://nitter.poast.org/dibartz https://twitter.com/dibartz https://twitter.com/dibartz https://nitter.poast.org/leah_nylen https://nitter.poast.org/leah_nylen https://twitter.com/leah_nylen https://twitter.com/leah_nylen