Google Dirty Tricks Tracker

As we begin the most important Antitrust trial of the century we are beginning to see dirty tricks from the Google legal team as part of a broader effort to use their unlimited legal resources to protect their monopoly.

We’re doing this because we’ve observed shady tactics from Google over the years and they merit documentation. Speaking to the New York Times, David Boies, a lawyer who successfully prosecuted Microsoft for the Justice Department more than 20 years ago, said Google failed to produce documents, denied all liability and fought for every inch. “...He said he had gotten sanctions against Google twice, including a million-dollar penalty, for failing to deliver relevant evidence."

For the duration of this trial we will keep a tracker of Google’s Dirty Legal Tricks.

  1. September 7, 2023: Google objected to a live audio feed of the trial.

  2. September 8, 2023: In a separate case, Google was admonished by the Judge for missing deadlines & withholding hundreds of thousands— and possibly millions—of documents. When a multi-trillion dollar corporation misses legal deadlines, it’s not by mistake. This is a tactic deployed to hinder the Court’s work.

  3. September 11, 2023: Bloomberg reporting reveals Google instructed employees to use self-destructing chats when discussing business related to litigation.

  4. September 13: We learned that Google Chief Economist, Hal Varian, gave trainings to his colleagues where he taught them not to say the words “market share” and not to use phrases like “Cutting off the air supply.”

  5. September 18: We learned Google raised the price of ads to meet Wall Street revenue targets. They decided not to tell advertisers about these price increases.

  6. September 19: Google complained to the Judge about the DOJ posting documents online, even though Google themselves have their own trial website where they’ve been posting exhibits.

  7. September 22: Judge Amit Mehta takes the critical anti-monopoly Google trial from “limited public access” to “closed.”

  8. September 29: Judge Amit Mehta allows redacted memos to be uploaded by the DOJ for public access and we learn that Michael Roszak, vice president for finance at Google, in July 2017,  likened the company’s search advertising business to selling drugs, calling it “one of the world’s greatest business models ever created” .

  9. October 2: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gives testimony revealing that Google “ has a massive stick,” when trying to intimidate phone makers and carriers into making Google the search engine. That stick is withholding the Google Play Store, the most popular app marketplace for phones not created by Apple. “Without Google Play,” as Nadella said, “an Android Phone is a brick.”

  10. October 6: In court, the former President of Samsung NEXT, internal emails were shown saying, "Google is clearly buying its way to squelch competitors. Outside of a potential antitrust action, I don't see Samsung refusing these terms." Later, Chang and two other colleagues discussed whether the action by the DOJ might lead Google to be "less aggressive in strict interpretations of contracts." Chang responded, "Actually the COMPLETE opposite. Google just did a fuck you to Samsung,"

  11. October 10: The court is shown an explosive email from Google’s Sundar Pichai in 2007, before he became CEO decrying the bad ‘optics’ of Google's search engine deal with Apple.

  12. October 11: Arjan Dijk, Former Googler and Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Bookings.com, calls Google a “benevolent dictatorship.” in court while giving testimony and is badgered by Google’s lawyers to the point that the judge has to intervene.

  13. October 16: The NYTimes with the support of Bloomberg, WSJ, and the NY Post filed a motion seeking better access to the trial’s exhibits which often show internal emails, memos & damning evidence against Google