DOJ finally posted that “embarrassing” court doc Google wanted to hide
Google exec said users get hooked on search engine like “cigarettes or drugs.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The document in question contains meeting notes that Google’s vice president for finance, Michael Roszak, "created for a course on communications," Bloomberg reported.
Sealing Roszak's testimony made it harder for the public to understand the context of the document, Mehta worried.
Part of the DOJ's case argues that because Google has a monopoly over search, it's less incentivized to innovate products that protect consumers from harm like invasive data collection.
A Google spokesman told Bloomberg that Roszak's statements "don’t reflect the company’s opinion" and "were drafted for a public speaking class in which the instructions were to say something hyperbolic and attention-grabbing."
According to Bloomberg, Google lawyer Edward Bennett told the court that Roszak's notes suggest that the senior executive's plan for his presentation was essentially "cosplaying Gordon Gekko"—a movie villain who symbolizes corporate greed from 1987's Wall Street.
The debate over how much of Roszak's notes could be shared with the public ended with an agreement between the DOJ and Google on all trial exhibits.
The original article contains 537 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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In his notes, Roszak wrote that Google's search advertising "is one of the world's greatest business models ever created" with economics that only certain "illicit businesses" selling "cigarettes or drugs" "could rival."
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Beyond likening Google's search advertising business to illicit drug markets, Roszak's notes also said that because users got hooked on Google's search engine, Google was able to "mostly ignore the demand side" of "fundamental laws of economics" and "only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats, and sales." This was likely the bit that actually interested the DOJ.
Thanks, I was struggling to make sense of what the fuss was about (smokescreen?)
I love this bot
It's not just the search engines, it's the always on instant gratification machine that is called the smartphone. The only thing it's smart at, is stealing your privacy, stealing your money, and finally stealing your soul. Throw it away, and limit your internet usage to 1-2 hours per day max.
