I really hope its a jury trial, and they prove to be very useful. Interesting strategy Google went for.
fuckers
How much the bribe is for, people would be very upset if they knew how cheap they got sold out for.
We really need to stack the supreme court.
“Well republicans!—” …are already doing it in state supreme courts.
All that notwithstanding, Google cutting the check is a concession to the merits of the Antitrust Division’s case. As Lee Hepner put it, “If it wasn’t clear already, Google is acknowledging that actual monetary damages, even if trebled, are an insufficient deterrent for a trillion dollar entity to illegally maintain a monopoly.”
There are a couple of things going on here. First, Google has an unlimited budget for its antitrust defense, and it also does an immense amount of product testing. It’s quite likely that it did mock trials in front of test juries, and found that the outcome probably wasn’t good. The judge in the case, Leonie Brinkema, has been pretty annoyed at Google, so it’s not a promising outcome if they go with a bench trial. But they will bet on the judge than a jury. Second, circuit courts are usually more reluctant to overturn a jury than a judge, so Google wants Brinkema to have to author an opinion that they can then try to overturn.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
This week, liquor monopolist David Trone lost a Democratic primary despite spending $60 million, the Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is constitutional, and Google actually offered money to the Antitrust Division to try and avoid having a case go to a jury.
They just cut a check for all proposed harms, tripled it in accordance with the Sherman Act’s treble damages charge, and claimed that the point is moot.
Google hired a fancy medieval scholar, a guy at a Scottish university named Professor John Hudson, to explain how the founders were libertarians who thought the public was dumb.
I’ve watched a bunch of antitrust trials, and it’s clear that judges have too much power, and that having normal people involved would be a significant improvement.
As Lee Hepner put it, “If it wasn’t clear already, Google is acknowledging that actual monetary damages, even if trebled, are an insufficient deterrent for a trillion dollar entity to illegally maintain a monopoly.”
The judge in the case, Leonie Brinkema, has been pretty annoyed at Google, so it’s not a promising outcome if they go with a bench trial.
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