Monopoly Round-Up: Google Tries to Pay Off the Antitrust Division
www.thebignewsletter.com
In an astonishing move, Google cut a check to the U.S. government over an antitrust case, in the hopes of avoiding a jury trial. And it argues such jury trials are unconstitutional.
  • Metype English
    7•6 months ago

    Seen a concerningly large amount of companies calling things they don’t like “unconstitutional” lately.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    6•6 months ago

    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.

    The original article contains 675 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!