12 Comments

I’m loving this inside the courthouse look. So informative.

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Fabulous analysis of this ongoing court case!

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Betting the farm on refusal to deal is a risky strategy that seems unlikely prevail, particularly with such a savvy judge.

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Thank you! Keep it up!!

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The sportscaster style has got my attention! I'm on the governments side. It seems that publishers have to use Google's ad exchange in order to get to the advertiser market, advertisers have to use google's ad exchange in order to get to the publisher market. Google's case is that neither is contractually forced. The monopolization forces each side to contract with Google to get to the exchange. Am I thinking about this correctly?

I don't see the refusal to deal case at all. Who is Google refusing, excuse me, allegedly refusing to deal with, that harms competition? It's not refusing business of customers who use ad market tool X; it just "has the better product".

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I am curious why google isn’t fighting harder.. do you think they are holding out because they know they are going to lose and are hoping for new FTC & DOJ on appeal that will be friendlier to corporations?

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This is where my head goes too. Given Kamala's ties to big tech it stands to reason that she'd be their preferred president. I could see her giving Google a fine rather than doing anything meaningful, like breaking up the company.

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Enjoyed your color history. Added a lot to the article, thanks. Yes, a lot of these democratic insiders are Silicon Valley/ old Clinton machine democrats. Neoliberals to the core. Some even say deep state.

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I feel like this is a distinction without a difference. Neither tying nor refusing to deal come close to describing their piratical behavior. I feel like this should be a RICO case.

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What the heck are you talking about? Tying (supported by anticompetitive buyouts) is exactly the core conduct described by the government in this case. It is already illegal under the Sherman and Clayton Acts in any situation where it works. To get to RICO, you'd have to claim that Google's deals with Amazon and Facebook involved committing Title 18 felonies, or something along those lines. In short, it's not RICO (https://perma.cc/3ALZ-H55U).

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I suppose the other point to mention would be that, in Google's ideal framing of the case, it's the *advertisers*, not Google itself, who are in fact refusing to deal (with the publishers), hence the emphasis on advertisers as the principle agents making the bidding decisions.

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Since they did engage in "refusal to deal" what you're saying is defense is trying to make it either/or?

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