Days 10-12: US v Google recap

Author

Ari Paparo
September 24, 2024

The Monopoly Report is going daily during the trial. Our intrepid founder is in a windowless room without a phone or laptop to get you the good stuff.

Days 10-12: US v Google recap

Your intrepid reporter needed to attend to his real life and leave the lovely confines of Alexandria, Virginia for the past couple of days. But don’t fret! I am writing this very recap from the Acela, and will be back in action tomorrow.

Luckily for all of us, we have Arielle Garcia’s updates for CheckMyAds, and Matt Stoler’s Big Newsletter to keep us informed.

Here’s what happened (according to them).

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Day 10: The spaghetti football

Last Friday the court heard a four-plus hour cross examination of plaintiff’s expert witness, Professor Robin Lee. If you’re into the legalisms and strategy of the whole thing I’d suggest Matt’s detailed play-by-play. As I read this I became quite happy with my decision to skip the day and spend time with my family.

The highlight of Day 10 was the start of Google’s case and the introduction of a new ad tech meme, the “spaghetti football.” For some reason Google thought that making ad tech seem even more complex would help their case, so they did a live drawing/illustration of all the ad tech boxes and put the following image into evidence:

Not Guilty, Your Honor!

I’m going to post some memes:

Day 11: Someone keeps their chats!

We start the day, like any day, with coffee and a crossword. In this case, it is a US v Google crossword from Arielle:

The most important witness on Day 11 was Nitish Korula, a Google engineering director with oversight over much of the sell-side ad tech. His testimony was focused on bolstering some of the points Google has made on their product decision making, such as:

  • Enabling real-time bidding from AdX to other ad servers would be difficult.

  • Ad quality was always a big concern.

  • “Last look” wasn’t really a thing, it only looked like it because other folks bid first.

For a more detailed review of Nitish’s testimony, see here.

And here is Matt Tom Blakely pulling out his newsletters-should-be-eligible-for-Pulitzers prose putting the Google defense within the Obama-era corporate left, but ill-suited for today’s politics:

“The way Google talks about itself, or at least the ways its lawyers talk about Google—radiates this Obama-era framing of neoliberal corporatism and technocratic centrism, that still views the monolithic leviathan that is mega-cap Big Tech firms as scrappy garage startups that America’s downtrodden, tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free, ought to look up to as wondrous beacons of innovation, levity, and progress.”

“If you have the ear for it (and one need not have perfect pitch to pick up on some of these notes) there’s a way these sorts of people talk about the issues in this case (or don’t talk about them) and of companies like Google, and issues of corporate power more broadly, that paints this world in unbridled optimism, infinite possibilities, and wonder and awe at what these companies have to offer. Maybe back when the newest iPhone used to amaze people on a yearly basis with its innovation, or when Google first came out with innovative collaboration tools, or its revolutionary search engine, and platforms like YouTube, these framings were appropriate. But it’s 2024, and the US government just spent two weeks laying out everything that is wrong with the reality of what Google has become.”

Journalists are stupid

Or so thinks Google. One recurring pattern in this trial has been the evidence of absence. Absent chat logs, that is. Many Google employees have testified as to their sloppy record keeping around chats. Mr. Korula, on the other hand, seems to have been diligent about saving chat history. Which gives us this gem, from the keyboard of Google PM Chetna Bindra at the expense of Sarah Sluis, Executive Editor at AdExchanger.

Sarah, took it like a pro and posted this on X:

Day 12: Google is good, actually

Just cribbing and summarizing from Ariel’s excellent update the focus today was on Paul Milgrom, Stanford Professor and economist. Paul’s testimony challenged some of the simplified diagrams offered by the plaintiffs for explaining complex topics like “first look” (which I had objected to in this newsletter as well!). Google also put some points on the board with a description of their quality control and anti-spam efforts.

What’s next?

Tomorrow I’ll be back in the courthouse. We expect Google to rest by the end of the week. I’ve heard contradictory opinions about whether the case conclusion would be followed by some kind of “pause” before closing arguments were made, but have not been able to confirm. I’ve also heard unconfirmed rumors that the judge was trying to work around the Jewish holidays next Wednesday-Friday, but also don’t know if that’s true.

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