US Argues Google Wants Too Much Information Kept Secret In Antitrust Trial (reuters.com) 41
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Justice Department on Monday objected to removing the public from the court during some discussions of how Google prices online advertising, one of the issues at the heart of the antitrust trial under way in Washington. The government is seeking to show that Alphabet's Google broke antitrust law to maintain its dominance in online search. The search dominance led to fast-increasing advertising revenues that made Google a $1 trillion company. [Throughout the trial, Google's defense is that its high market share reflects the quality of its product rather than any illegal actions to build monopolies in some aspects of its business.]
David Dahlquist, speaking for the government, pointed to a document that was redacted that had a short back and forth about Google's pricing for search advertising. Dahlquist then argued to Judge Amit Mehta, who will decide the case, that information like the tidbit in the document should not be redacted. "This satisfies public interest because it's at the core of the DOJ case against Google," he said. Speaking for Google, John Schmidtlein urged that all discussions of pricing be in a closed session, which means the public and reporters must leave the courtroom. [...]
Case in point was testimony given early Monday by a Verizon executive, Brian Higgins, about the company's decision to always pre-install Google's Chrome browser with Google search on its mobile phones. After about 30 minutes of testimony, Higgins' testimony was closed for the next two hours. It's possible that he was asked about Google's payments to Verizon but the public will never know. Those payments -- which the government said are $10 billion annually to mobile carriers and others -- helped the California-based tech giant win powerful default positions on smartphones and elsewhere.
David Dahlquist, speaking for the government, pointed to a document that was redacted that had a short back and forth about Google's pricing for search advertising. Dahlquist then argued to Judge Amit Mehta, who will decide the case, that information like the tidbit in the document should not be redacted. "This satisfies public interest because it's at the core of the DOJ case against Google," he said. Speaking for Google, John Schmidtlein urged that all discussions of pricing be in a closed session, which means the public and reporters must leave the courtroom. [...]
Case in point was testimony given early Monday by a Verizon executive, Brian Higgins, about the company's decision to always pre-install Google's Chrome browser with Google search on its mobile phones. After about 30 minutes of testimony, Higgins' testimony was closed for the next two hours. It's possible that he was asked about Google's payments to Verizon but the public will never know. Those payments -- which the government said are $10 billion annually to mobile carriers and others -- helped the California-based tech giant win powerful default positions on smartphones and elsewhere.
The irony and the hypocrisy (Score:5, Informative)
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Company that destroys your privacy asks for more privacy.
Country that spies on literally everyone, including their friends and allies, wants to be spied on less.
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I think that's his point - the same hypocrisy operates on multiple levels.
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Eric is basically an oligarch. In fact, he just recently bought a superyacht from one of the Russian oli
Hey Google? (Score:3)
Perhaps Russia or Korea or China would be a good place for you to make your customers/nee products be compelled by the force of law to not know how you are using their information.
Y'all have went from do no harm, to "We do what we want, and don't want anyone to know what we do, and if you are harmed, tough titty cupcake, and fuck you!"
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They're just afraid someone will scrape the data off PACER and use it to send them targeted ads for erectile dysfunction meds. ;)
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They wouldn't have to close the proceeding to the public to do so, And they can just request theat the record be sealed.
Naw.. I think they're obviously fearful of media attention -- any public discussion about their ad pricing is fodder for the media which can affect the public image of their brand. I would say they should have thought of that a long time ago, though. The purpose of allowing closed proceedings is Not to hide the facts about a defendant's conduct in order to protect their reputation or
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Unless you are talking about classified data, your trial isn't secret.
Perhaps Russia or Korea or China would be a good place for you to make your customers/nee products be compelled by the force of law to not know how you are using their information.
Y'all have went from do no harm, to "We do what we want, and don't want anyone to know what we do, and if you are harmed, tough titty cupcake, and fuck you!"
But this is why you want to ban TikTok
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Unless you are talking about classified data, your trial isn't secret.
Perhaps Russia or Korea or China would be a good place for you to make your customers/nee products be compelled by the force of law to not know how you are using their information.
Y'all have went from do no harm, to "We do what we want, and don't want anyone to know what we do, and if you are harmed, tough titty cupcake, and fuck you!"
But this is why you want to ban TikTok
Who is "you"? I surely don't. TikTok is a gold mine of kooks to collect.
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But this is why you want to ban TikTok
Plenty of Americans, myself among them, do not want to ban TikTok. I personally think all social media is a toxic cesspool of mind altering time suck, that has destroyed our collective mental health and small 'd' democracy, but, fun fact, it's free speech. Frankly, I doubt the Federal Government has a constitutional way to ban TikTok, even if it got as far as legislation or regulation, it would be highly unlikely to survive judicial review. It can nibble around the edges, I don't personally think Section
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Frankly, I doubt the Federal Government has a constitutional way to ban TikTok
The constitution protects fundamental rights: It doesn't have a way to stop the government from tearing down specific facilities or regulating overseas commerce that it deems a hazard. You have free speech, but the State is still allowed to condemn a library, or the town square and demolish it as needed for what they deem to be safety reasons - So long as they don't restrict what you can say there when it's in operation,
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If TikTok poses a danger to its users, then they got a legitimate state interest which allows them to close that specific place down as a "Public nuisance" - regardless of whether it's a physical space or a virtual space
Restrictions on free speech come under the strict scrutiny standard. Look it up. I invite you to make an argument for banning TikTok that’s going to clear that very high threshold. You can’t, because it requires restrictions be narrowly tailored to meet a compelling (not simply “legitimate”) state interest, and banning something is the very opposite of that.
They probably could get them out of the app stores if they tried, via the sanctions process, ditto limiting their ad dol
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Restrictions on free speech come under the strict scrutiny standard.
It's a frivolous argument the court would throw out.
Shutting down a business or demolishing a property is not a restriction on free speech, so the standard doesn't even come into play.
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Okay dude. I look forward to your apology after the Montana suit is concluded. It is primarily being argued on free speech grounds and has very definitely not been dismissed as frivolous. TikTok is likely to get an injection (check back in a few weeks) against that law and those are only issued in the Federal system when the case has a high likelihood of being won on the merits.
EFF and ACLU agree with me [aclu.org], incidentally, but I guess their legions of lawyers are incompetent and mysidia (191772), Esq. knows
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Okay dude. I look forward to your apology after the Montana suit is concluded. It is primarily being argued on free speech
No. That's called a strawman. The Montana law targeting Tiktok is doomed, because of what that state put in their statute.
They're actually trying to State that it is a violation of the law for a User to access TikTok, and set a fine for App stores distributing the TikTok app content from their store, which is indeed civil rights issues -- Moreover; the state of Montana is attempting
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Tell me you know nothing about Constitutional Law and how the SCOTUS adjudicates it without telling me.
You win the internet for the day for most ignorant legal theory.
Re:Hey Google? (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you are talking about classified data, your trial isn't secret.
Trade secrets have a specific legal standing [jdsupra.com], and are, in fact, kept secret during trials. Whether you agree with it or not, whether it really applies to the specific secrets in this case or not, that is how it works, and you are incorrect.
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Unless you are talking about classified data, your trial isn't secret.
Trade secrets have a specific legal standing [jdsupra.com], and are, in fact, kept secret during trials
And this is a good thing, otherwise it would be easy to use lawsuits to out all of a competitor's trade secrets regardless of whether there is any merit in the suit.
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Unless you are talking about classified data, your trial isn't secret.
Trade secrets have a specific legal standing [jdsupra.com], and are, in fact, kept secret during trials
And this is a good thing, otherwise it would be easy to use lawsuits to out all of a competitor's trade secrets regardless of whether there is any merit in the suit.
Exactly this. Without that protection, your competitors could underprice, out-pay, and outcompete you by simply initiating suits that seek discovery for information like your margins, suppliers, client lists, billable rates, compensation for your top performers, or even the secret formula for your namesake product if you’re Coca-Cola.
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Actually you could probably get Coca-Cola's formula if you made some kind of case against them, where the documentation of their recipes and processes would be relevant to your case, and your claims not deemed so defective to be thrown out before discovery. Most civil cases have an ending that looks something like being thrown out by a judge through a motion to dismiss for failure of the plaintiff to state a claim with a minimal amount of info to even support the claim.
Those protective strategies above b
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Parties to the case can of course try to get extra orders from the judge to protect themselves, But at the end of the day Company staff on both sides end up with access to each others' documents as part of the discovery process
This is not necessarily true. Discovery materials can be (and when the case involves trade secrets and competitors, will very likely be) limited to outside counsel only, with neither the client nor their inside counsel (if any) ever having access to the information in question.
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Unless you are talking about classified data, your trial isn't secret.
Trade secrets have a specific legal standing [jdsupra.com], and are, in fact, kept secret during trials
Yes, I was using classified in a very broad sense.
Now, it is quite possible to reverse engineer something like a business' pricing scheme, and from there, the whole way back to their algorithms. I'm pretty sure they already have - which is why Google wants their information kept secret.
It further gives a hint to all that there is more than philosophical reasons they want it kept secret. But there may be some political reasons.
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You're assuming without evidence that someone has already reverse-engineered Google's trade secrets, and then based on that assumption you're concluding that there must be some other reason Google doesn't want its trade secrets published.
I posit that it's vastly more likely that Google just believes its trade secrets are secret.
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Yes, I was using classified
Incorrectly. That word, too, has a specific legal meaning.
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Yes, I was using classified
Incorrectly. That word, too, has a specific legal meaning.
Wow, haven't seen a pedantic slashdot lawyer in a while. Yes, there are trade secrets, yes there is classified data, and yes there is protection of victims.
But you see, your requirement for me to use the word classified in an extremely narrow fashion, leaves something missing - not only to differentiate between Classified as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as either
1: divided into classes or placed in a class.
Counselor - an example of this would be what is referred to as "classidified ad
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But you see, your requirement for me to use the word classified in an extremely narrow fashion, leaves something missing
Yeah, two things:
You being right, and anybody else (or you) having any idea what you're talking about.
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But you see, your requirement for me to use the word classified in an extremely narrow fashion, leaves something missing
Yeah, two things:
You being right, and anybody else (or you) having any idea what you're talking about.
Nah - I don't care that much - If you were the genius you want to appear to be, You'd simply write that I was being overbroad. Then I'd say you were right. I was over broad.
But you wanted to be pedantic and narrow about it, so I figured that pissing you off was going to be a bit of fun. And it was.
And just because you didn't have any idea what I was talking about - that's a you problem, homie - you're the only one with a rageboner.
Get better at what you are trying to do , because in reality - noow I
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Nah - I don't care that much
And yet, you keep replying. And replying. And replying. Awful lot of effort for something you don't care about.
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Nah - I don't care that much
And yet, you keep replying. And replying. And replying. Awful lot of effort for something you don't care about.
And here's another one. I type as fast as I talk, so it doesn't take much time or effort at all.
BTW, you appear to be continually replying, so is what you are telling me is that you won't stop until I do?
p.s. You are being trolled at this point if you haven't figured it out.
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Trade secrets have a specific legal standing [jdsupra.com], and are, in fact, kept secret during trials. Whether you agree with it or not, whether it really applies to the specific secrets in this case or not, that is how it works, and you are incorrect.
I will, respectfully, say it does not apply in this case. Google’s algorithm is a trade secret. The way they price ads arguably would not be even if they weren’t on trial for alleged monopolistic/anticompetitive/antitrust violations.
How is PRICING a trade secret when anyone with a sufficient amount of time could suss it out themselves for most scenarios? My local cable monopoly has different prices down to the street level, magically better at those addresses where they have a fiber compe
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That said, since this is a case about potentially monopolizing advertising, those prices are pretty dang relevant. Moreover, I suspect that Google isn't worried about their competitors finding out how much is being charged,
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I would say it seems here the real issue is companies trying to keep everything confidential and claim every single thing about their fundamental business as a trade secret, which is not legitimate.
While treating EVERYTHING internal as a secret down to the most basic items, such as what your policies are, might offer a business advantage -- it doesn't seem like it should be considered a legitimate manner of doing business to claim everything as secret, and the court should not grant a privilege to keep sec
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Unless you are talking about classified data, your trial isn't secret
That's for the judge to decide. Companies can always keep legitimate trade secrets and certain other sensitive items sealed and Off the public record.
For example; If Coca cola want to sue a competitor for copying their recipe -- they Don't have to let the public into the discussions where their secret formula is being shown.
If you're suing Equifax for Identity theft because of their security breach -- Your social security number won't b
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The question should come down to what is Google's justification that this information be redacted. What is the claimed concern about damage to their business if the information is released, And is that because it is privileged information competitors could use, Or is it because people knowing the truth would make them look bad due to allegedly wrongful conduct coming out on Google's part?
It's only conjecture here, but the way these cases are handled, the Guvmint probably already knows where the bodies are buried, and it's in the stuff Google wants suppressed.
The big issue with secrecy, especially with things that aren't readily seen as secret, like the KFC chicken coating or the recipe for Coke is that pricing has some well known differences. Buy in bulk, and you get a discount. buy different packages, get a deal. And we all know that once you are on board, the prices will go up, and spe
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the stuff Google wants suppressed ... And if the info is suppressed, the rumor mills will be running overtime.
Not necessarily excluded from the trial, just kept out of the public record.
There are many legal protections in place, as others are now discussing, for this very reason. It would be easy to abuse lawsuits, use a lawsuit to force competitors to discover trade secrets, use a lawsuit to force confidential records to be publicly exposed, etc. We have a legal system that allows for documents to be redacted, for documents to be filed under seal, for information to be kept eyes-only, and for some things to only
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pricing has some well known differences. Buy in bulk, and you get a discount. buy different packages, get a deal. And we all know that once you are on board, the prices will go up, and specials are often used for new businesses getting on board.
Yes... These are tried and true pricing schemes to make both single unit sales possible while incentivizing larger purchases, which can also afford a lower cost per unit to ship for the supplier - every businessperson ought to already know of such things. It's
Revenue sharing is not illegal (Score:2)
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If it's strictly revenue sharing it probably isn't.
If it's direct payments to include their product, it also probably isn't.
If it's direct payments to keep their competitors off the platforms, it probably IS illegal.
If it's threats to rescind revenue if platforms use another product, it's DEFINITELY illegal.
To suss out which exactly is going on you're going to need the full details of the pricing structure and communications about the pricing structure.
This is how Microsoft lost their anti-trust case in the
Secrecy and public trust? (Score:2)
The fact that they want secrecy is the evidence that they have violated the public trust. If your business practices are so egregious that you won't admit to them in open court, you're probably doing more than one thing wrong.