Today, oral arguments in Epic v. Apple were made before the Ninth Circuit. Quick background: the district court dismissed federal claims against Apple but found that it violated CA’s unfair competition law and issued an injunction with an anti-steering provision.

We've just come off the heels of the Google search case remedy, just as things are ramping up in Google's ad tech case. That remedy trial is set to start on September 22, and both parties filed their remedy proposals late Friday night. Let's unpack them 🧵

The Google search case is the first in a series of antitrust cases against big tech, with Amazon, Meta, and Apple still in the pipeline. Judge Mehta issued a tailored remedy after ruling that Google monopolized general search. His reasoning will likely guide future courts.

Tomorrow marks the closing arguments in the remedies proceedings of the #USvGoogle search case. Both sides have just filed reply briefs.

Amazon and the FTC have both moved for summary judgment in the Prime “dark patterns” case headed to trial this fall. Amazon is seeking dismissal, the FTC seeking liability. After nearly 2 years of discovery, the evidence doesn’t support the FTC’s headline-grabbing claims.

⚖️ A federal judge just threw out Rumble’s antitrust lawsuit against YouTube, finding it was years too late, built on legal theories it never even pled, and "fatally vague and conclusory."

📄The government and Google's post trial briefs in search remedies were just filed. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin on 5/29.

First in the DOJ’s rebuttal case was Kinshuk Jerath, who was their digital marketing expert during the liability phase. He was called to rebut Mark Israel's conclusions, G’s economics/industrial organization expert, about advertiser-focused remedies.

Google rested its case in the #USvGoogle search remedy trial. But hold your horses, it's not over yet. The DOJ will put on a short rebuttal case tomorrow. G's final witness was Omkar Muralidharan, VP of Product Management for search ads.

On the second-to-last day of the search remedies trial, we finally talked about consumer welfare at length. Kevin Murphy, another familiar face from the liability trial, was designated G's economics and industrial organization expert.

Sameer Samat, President of the Android ecosystem, took the stand today in the #USvGoogle search remedy trial to explain how the government's "contingent" remedy to break off Android and the Play Store would cause harm.

(One of ?)the first amicus briefs has rolled into the #USvGoogle search remedy trial docket. The culprits? Bipartisan Former Antitrust Enforcers (see list ⬇️ )

Google’s final witness of the day in the #USvGoogle search remedy trial was Chris Culnane, who was designated as an expert in data privacy. His first conclusion: Plaintiffs' data disclosure and ads transparency remedies include personal data beyond what may be considered PII.

DOJ’s cross of Liz Reid, G’s head of search, zeroed in on the relationship between generative AI and traditional search, trying to draw a straight line from Gemini to Google Search.

Liz Reid, head of G Search, is on the stand today. Her testimony shows how the gov’t proposed data sharing & syndication remedies go far beyond sharing “scale-dependent data” and would require G to share proprietary tech and data unrelated to user scale.

The last witness of the week was Eli Collins, who is the VP of Product at DeepMind. DeepMind is a “super unit" resulting from the merging of 2 Google organizations.

Google's next witness in the search remedies trial was a familiar face. Dr. Mark Israel testified during liability and was back as an expert in industrial organization.

Google's next witness in the search remedies trial was a familiar face. Dr. Mark Israel testified during liability and was back as an expert in industrial organization.

An interesting exchange b/t Judge Mehta and Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim- Mehta: Would Mozilla benefit from at least one other competitor with equal quality and the ability to monetize? Muhlheim: If we were suddenly in that world, it would be good for Mozilla.

Good morning from Day 9 of the #USvGoogle search remedies trial. G's first witness of the day was UMass Amherst professor James Allan, designated an expert in computer science and information retrieval.

There are just 6 days left in the DOJ v. Google search remedies trial 🤯 Tomorrow G will continue its case by presenting: James Allan, an expert in computer science Jesse Adkins, Director of Product Management at G Eli Collins, VP of Product at G's DeepMind (AI lab)

Google called their next witness in the search remedy trial, Columbia professor Jason Nieh, who was designated as an expert in computer science.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stand this morning as part of Google’s defense against the DOJ’s broad remedy framework in the search trial, which, according to Pichai, would involve a “de facto” divestiture of Google search.

This afternoon, Google began its defense in landmark search remedy trial against DOJ/States. Its first witness, long-time Googler and VP of Security Engineering, Heather Adkins set the stage on how the govt's data sharing and divestiture remedies present alarming security risks.

The DOJ's last witness in its case for extensive search remedies took the stand today. Tasneem Chipty, an econ consultant, was designated as an expert in industrial organization.

Good morning from the #USvGoogle search remedy trial. We are just about halfway there, the government is calling its final witness before resting its case in chief. I've attended the entire thing and have created a witness tracker highlighting key points during each witness examination.

The penultimate witness in the government's case took the stand this afternoon. David Locala is a retired M&A professional. He worked on 111 deals, 40 concerning software transactions and 20 involving divestitures.

The States took the stage next, to advocate for their "public education" campaign/fund. This search remedy, notably, is not supported by the DOJ. They called John Hopkin's professor, Michael Luca, as an expert in behavioral economics.

Parisa Tabriz, Google’s VP of engineering and general manager for Chrome, took the stand next. She joined in 2007 and has been working on Chrome since then. The DOJ’s exam focused on how Chrome is profitable for search.

Hello from Day 5 from #USvGoogle search remedies. The DOJ called Paul Vallez from Skai, to testify about the search ads data sharing remedies it has proposed.

The cross of Yahoo was the perfect illustration of how behind every search engine rival we’ve heard from, MSFT lurks. MSFT’s contracts w/smaller engines will likely foreclose the utility of the DOJ’s remedies, leaving MSFT as the true beneficiary of G’s forced data/tech sharing.

Brian Provost, Yahoo’s SVP of search took the stand in the #USvGoogle search remedy trial next. Yahoo is the 3rd biggest search engine in the US, and was the leading player before it was overtaken by G in the mid/late 2000s.

Hello from Day 4 in the #USvGoogle search remedy trial. The DOJ called Michael Schechter, MSFT’s VP of Bing Growth, to the stand to further their argument that search and AI are closely integrated, thus warranting broad AI-related remedies.

The DOJ’s next Witness was Gabriel Weinberg, founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo. It is the third-largest search engine in the United States and the second-largest on mobile. They receive 110-120M daily searches.

The DOJ continued its parade of AI witnesses. Next was Dmitry Shevelenko, the Chief Business Officer at Perplexity AI. Interestingly, Shevelenko described Perplexity as an “answer machine,” suggesting it falls somewhere between a search engine and an AI chatbot.

Hello from Day 3 at #USvGoogle remedies trial. The DOJ called G exec, Sissie Hsiao to the stand. Hsiao worked on the Gemini app and the DOJ likely called her to bolster their arguments that search & AI go hand in hand to justify their remedies that will impede on AI competition.

The final witness of the day was another expert and a familiar face. Prof Antonio Rangel, who testified during the liability phase as a behavioral econ expert took the stand today. His focus was on choice screens.

The cross of Nick Turley homed in on OpenAI's massive success. OAI considers itself a leader in AI, and to many people, AI = Open AI. Judge Mehta unredacted some figures previously marked as confidential confirming OAI's quickly gained prominence.

Nick Turley, the head of product at OpenAI, took the stand next. Funnily, he mentioned that ChatGPT was meant to be a “throwaway demo”, among various prototypes for public use of generative AI.

Hello from Day 2 of the US v Google search remedies trial. The DOJ’s next witness was Peter Fitzgerald who is VP of global ptnerhsips for platforms/devices at G. Fitzpatrick was called as a hostile witness & his testimony focused on G’s agreements with Android OEMs.

The DOJ’s first witness in the #USvGoogle remedy trial was Gregory Durrett, an Associate Professor at the University of Texas. His assignment in this case was to assess how G search, G search index & user data may be used to build and improve gen AI search features and apps.

🧵Google’s opening began by positing that the DOJ’s remedy approach proceeds from an incorrect legal premise- to terminate G’s monopoly. This is the wrong standard to apply here because this is a monopoly maintenance case, not a monopoly acquisition case.

DOJ’s opening statement began by noting Abigail Slater was in the gallery (front row) as a signal that DOJs past and present fully support the proposed remedies which indicate a bipartisan position Big props to there not being a single reference to big tech censorship though

Hello from #USvGoogle, the remedies trial in the DOJ's search case against Google kicks off today. I'll be in court every day, sharing key moments and observations, so stay tuned for my daily updates!

Ruling just dropped in the second DOJ v Google antitrust case (ad tech) and Google has been found to have monopolized the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets.

The remedy trial in the DOJ v. Google search case is days away. The DOJ has gone BIG with its proposed remedies, pursuing breakup, going after AI deals, browser agreements etc. What will that mean for users? The Progressive Policy Institute released a report that digs in.

🏛️ Final pretrial conf for DOJ v. Google search remedies trial just wrapped up. Trial is set to start April 21st & the DOJ is pursuing a wide range of remedies including spinning off Chrome, Android, elimination of defaults, sale of data/syndication, limitation of AI deals etc.

📄 The DOJ v. Google search remedy trial is little over a week away, with a final pretrial conference scheduled for tomorrow. The DOJ just filed a pretrial statement that includes witness lists of who will likely be testifying live.

The Director General for Competition at the Europe Commission spoke at The Future of Antitrust Enforcement & Policy conference in DC and proposed that antitrust enforcers across the globe should consider coordinating tech enforcement together, with an eye towards AI 👀

Anthropic stands firm, declaring that the DOJ's proposed remedies spell trouble for the company. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.u...