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**DECEMBER 12, 2023**
On the Prospect website
Israel Rounds Up Palestinians for Social Media Posts
A new national security task force has initiated 250 prosecutions,
mostly against Palestinian students. Detainees have been held in maximum
security prisons for weeks. BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN
Spying Extension Angers Broad Majority Favoring Reform
Speaker Mike Johnson inserted a four-month extension of a warrantless
spying program into the annual defense policy bill. BY DAVID DAYEN
COP-Out 28
As the debacle in Dubai demonstrates, the oil companies and their OPEC
allies are the last people we can trust to solve climate change. BY
ROBERT KUTTNER
Dayen on TAP
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**** Jury Finds That Google Is a Monopolist
Disgruntled ex-FTC employees dishing to mainstream media aside, the
public understands the rampant use of Big Tech monopoly power.
I have definitely had moments here at the Prospect where a news
development totally changes a story I'm about to run the next day.
Usually I'll try to, you know, do something about it, either by
including the news development or holding the story. Today,
**New York**magazine decided to just post through it.
Former corporate defense lawyer Ankush Khardori regurgitated some gossip
from anonymous sources who left the Federal Trade Commission (for
corporate jobs? who knows!) and don't like Lina Khan, criticizing both
her management style and prosecutorial discretion. It's clear that
these ex-officials were pleased with their work in government amid
relentless economic consolidation over the past 40 years; it's unclear
why anyone should care about what they think about antitrust.
But you would think that the editors running an article claiming that
Khan is squandering a "once-in-a-generation movement to dramatically
transform government antitrust policy" would have checked the headlines
and noticed yesterday's unanimous verdict
in the Google Play Store case.
A jury in Northern California, after deliberating for just a few hours,
found Google guilty of anti-competitive practices in the app market for
Android phones. The suit was not brought by the FTC, but by Epic Games,
the makers of Fortnite. Epic argued that Google forced app developers to
use its Play Store for distribution, leveraging this power to charge
fees on in-app purchases of up to 30 percent. When Epic tried to
encourage users to pay them directly for their games instead, Google and
Apple kicked them out of their respective app stores.
A separate case against Apple resulted in a mostly negative verdict
for Epic, but it's still on appeal. It says something that this jury
(which maybe wasn't composed of
**New York**magazine readers) rather quickly agreed that Google was
exercising monopoly power, when the judges in the Apple case tied
themselves in knots denying it.
[link removed]
You can see why the jury might reach this conclusion. According to trial
testimony, Google
**paid other companies** to not develop competing app stores, and
destroyed employee chat logs that could have included relevant
information. While Khardori's story insinuates that judges just
aren't ready for novel theories of antitrust, the judge in the Google
Play case instructed the jury that they should assume that those deleted
chats would be unfavorable to Google.
Epic, which pursued this suit after all other plaintiffs reached
sweetheart settlements
,
did not ask for a cash reward, but an injunction to change how Google
does business on Android phones, essentially to break up the app store
monopoly. The trial is now slated to move to a remedies phase, where the
judge could allow multiple app stores on Android, limits on the tolls
Google takes from in-app purchases, and an end to Google's tying of
its app store and billing payment services.
Google is appealing the case, so the final story hasn't been
completed. But you would think that a writer claiming that overreach has
ruined the movement for more aggressive antitrust enforcement wouldn't
publish that opinion
**on the**
**same day** as the first major antitrust loss for a Big Tech firm in
the Web 2.0 era.
If this precedent plays a role in the multiple government cases against
the company, including the search trial
that
recently concluded testimony, Khardori's arguments and those of his
sources will look even more foolish. As Matt Stoller explains
,
"Judges are cautious, and are generally afraid of being the first to
make a precedent-setting decision. Now they won't have to. In fact,
judges and juries will now have to find a reason to rule
**for** Google."
It takes a lot to puncture the bubble of invincibility that Big Tech has
created for itself, through lobbying dollars and academic corruption
and, yes, infiltration into media narratives. But once it's punctured,
it's hard to get that invincibility back.
At any rate, I hope
**New York**does a follow-up. Their readers might just learn something.
~ DAVID DAYEN
**Follow David Dayen on Twitter**
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