DOJ finally posted that “embarrassing” court doc Google wanted to hide
Google exec said users get hooked on search engine like “cigarettes or drugs.”
Dude wrote a memo telling everyone just how fucking evil we are and tried to hide it. They then got caught and try play off that he was cosplaying an evil villain from a movie. What a fucking joke. I hope Google gets broken up along with Amazon.
The antitrust law need to be refreshed and have teeth put back, it isn't just those two that need splitting.
They should all be lined up and shot. <— That’s not me saying it. It’s a parody from a movie about someone fed up with the late stage capitalist hellscape this world has become.
You posted it; own it
Dude wrote a memo telling everyone just how fucking evil we are and tried to hide it. They then got caught and try play off that he was cosplaying an evil villain from a movie.
Do you have a source for it being a legitimate memo? I get that the message is embarrassingly close to the truth, but if what you say is true, they'd be committing perjury - which would get them into even more trouble.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what is so evil about what was written in the document? To me it just sounded like the guy was bragging about their dominance.
The drug and cigarette analogy is dramatic, but the real heat is going to come from the claim that they only care about the supply side of the equation, not demand. In other words, their audience is locked in and has no power, and the ad suppliers (Google themselves) set the market conditions.
That is dangerously close to monopoly talk.
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!
For all the talk about how evil Google is, how many people are willing to put their money where their talk is, and pay for a decent competitor like Kagi?
I have like 10 tabs open right now reading all through Kagi's offering, search sources, and a bunch of Small Web stuff now. Going to give it a trial run this week and see how it performs, but I'm pretty convinced so far. Haven't used google for a whole now but still, pulling search straight from google or bing via third parties still gives shitty results as the whole ecosystem rapidly decays
