[AlbertCory]

> Schmidtlein has derided the excerpts as cherry-picked and “out of context.”

"out of context" is the standard BS answer to anything. "What context, exactly, is missing?" should be the followup question.

Odd that they don't mention that Sridhar Ramaswamy is not merely the "founder of Neeva" but he was head of Google AdWords for almost 10 years! I guess you can't expect these reporters to read their own site.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/20/23731397/neeva-search-eng...

[bawolff]

> "out of context" is the standard BS answer to anything. "What context, exactly, is missing?" should be the followup question.

Quoting things out of context is also the standard BS way to smear someone. In any case, i agree that the person asking the questions should expect this response. If they're prepared for that response and the quote really wasn't taken out of context, it shouldn't be too hard to make the person using it look like an idiot.

[AnthonyMouse]

The problem with all of this is that it's a performance.

Google does something actually anti-competitive, but it's subtle and requires a thorough understanding of industry dynamics to fully understand. But one of their employees said something that sounds bad, so guess what the headline is.

Whether the quote was taken out of context or not isn't even the interesting question, because it's independent of whether they're actually doing something wrong.

The quote could be completely in context and the employee was a fool who didn't know what they were talking about, or it could be completely out of context even though they actually did the bad thing.

[Aunche]

What exactly is so hard to understand? It's a well known fact that they pay to be the default search engine. Either that's against the rules or it is not. It sounds like the DOJ doesn't want to be blamed for any potential negative consequences for establishing clear rules, so instead they'll bully Google into settling so that they can get an easy win.

[AnthonyMouse]

The Department of Justice isn't a rulemaking entity, it's the federal prosecutor's office. The antitrust laws we have are quite old and passed during the era of robber barons in order to do something about them, with extremely broad language that by its terms would prohibit not only anything you might like them to but a lot of things you might not.

The result is that the courts get to make something up about when they apply, and have made a bit of a mess of it.

Sure, it says, "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal." But that doesn't mean Sprint can't merge with T-Mobile. Or maybe it does. Anybody have a coin to flip?

What the DoJ can do is dump a bunch of allegations into an indictment and hope some of them sound plausible enough to induce a settlement. Which will ideally actually promote competition and not be some political quid pro quo.

[dragonwriter]

> The Department of Justice isn’t a rulemaking entity

Yes, it is. [0]

> it’s the federal prosecutor’s office.

That is among its functions, yes.

> The antitrust laws we have are quite old and passed during the era of robber barons in order to do something about them, with extremely broad language that by its terms would prohibit not only anything you might like them to but a lot of things you might not.

Among the antitrust laws we have are:

* the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Reform and Enhancement Permanent Extension Act (2020); whose main effect was, as the names suggests, to make permanent the provisions of the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Reform and Enhancement Act (2004).

* the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act (2020)

* the antitrust provisions of the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2020 (oddly enough, 2021)

Some of our antitrust laws were written in the so-called “age of robber barons”, but antitrust law (even purely statute law) hasn’t been static since.

[0] for illustration, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-advances-p... ; you probably mean, though, that its not the rulemaking entity with regard to competition, since that’s mostly the FTC.

[AnthonyMouse]

> you probably mean, though, that its not the rulemaking entity with regard to competition, since that’s mostly the FTC.

I actually wasn't aware that they issued rules at all and now that I know that they do I kind of wish they would stop.

Sometimes we separate government functions for a reason.

> Some of our antitrust laws were written in the so-called “age of robber barons”, but antitrust law (even purely statute law) hasn’t been static since.

It's not that Congress hasn't passed a law since then, but I believe they're being accused of violating[0] the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416366.pdf

[AlbertCory]

There are entire books and law review articles written about antitrust law since the Sherman Act. Maybe you've read some of them?

Being "quite old and passed during the era of robber barons" is not quite the killing argument you think it is. The 13th Amendment is even older. So is Marbury vs. Madison.

[bell-cot]

> Either that's against the rules or it is not.

If the rules were actually that simple, the world would need far fewer lawyers.

But - whether you say "rules that simple can't work when the world is vastly more complex", or "rules-writing lawyers aren't stupid enough to write their own kind out of their jobs" - the rules are definitely not that simple.

[flagrant_taco]

Simple rules aren't very feasible though, laws need to be well defined and the sheer scale of societies today makes that anything but simple.

I'd argue that's the main reason for not making a law though, if it's too complicated for the average person to read and understand where the line is drawn then we shouldn't draw it.

[unyttigfjelltol]

As has been said so many times on HN, individual users of Google resources are not the customer, they are the product. Browser defaults are an annoying way that Google exerts pressure on everyone to be their product, but I'm more annoyed by their stupid Captcha API integrated into many pages Google has no business monitoring.

I feel harmed every day being coerced to be an unwilling and unhappy product of Google's adtech leviathan. I don't know what that means for this particular case, but hopefully Google gets the message and builds a better off-ramp.

[nonrandomstring]

> I feel harmed every day being coerced to be an unwilling and unhappy

You are harmed. The question now is how to obtain remedy for that objective harm and injunction against further actual harms.

[tiffanyg]

I would suggest that since this is a court case, the rhetorical / commentary-like (aspects of) statements made by the attorneys in court will (especially at this level) almost certainly be 'parsed out' in facts.

You're both right that this kind of language is used non-stop by people in certain roles today - especially politicians. Of course, that has always been the case in politics at any point in history I have any real knowledge about. In a courtroom, there are some real differences.

First, certain types of statements may be considered impermissible, and challenges are possible in various forms during various phases of a trial or hearing. Further, people who work in these environments tend to acquire a sort of "rhet-dar" (and a rather explicit form) that too many who don't get this kind of 'practice' every (work) day don't. And, of course, instructions can be provided to juries to disregard certain statements / evidence depending on challenges / various issues with something brought into a legal proceeding. Finally, at actual decision time, while rhetoric can influence, whether the decision is made by a judge or jury, the emphasis will be on facts, laws, interpretations of laws, etc.

Fluff rhetoric like "out of context" in an opening statement is quite empty, especially by the time a proceeding is wrapping up. Always makes a good sound bite for the external world though.

I can't personally be much more specific since my own legal experiences (of various types) have been ad hoc and infrequent. I considered pursuing a degree several times, never did. In particular, anyone reading would be right to not consider this in any way an authoritative comment. I will provide one ref though that has some pretty good additional info from what I had a chance to skim when looking for a bit more to give y'all. I'm sure there are others here far more expert than I, perhaps one will flesh things out better than I may have - but, giving at least a sense of the role that that kind of journalist-bait might play in an actual legal proceeding seemed worth something...

https://law.temple.edu/aer/2019/03/23/opening-statement-v-ar...

[photonthug]

Sigh, it's bad enough listening to lawyers play at this game of rigor/formality/objectivity, so it's even more tiresome to listen to others make their excuses/apologies for them. Lawyers and judges ARE politicians, not some scholars or scientists, and our courts do a bunch of batshit arbitrary stuff every day. Appealing to facts and "words mean things" and defending the profession as even meaningfully skilled, much less noble, seems silly these days when you take a look at most stuff in the real world. Roe v Wade comes to mind here- there's no esoteric and learned moral calculus going on, and we see that precedent matters only up until it does not. Judges invent the rules and ignore them when convenient. At least the other opinion engineers and spin doctors in society aren't as hypocritical about it. The outcome of this case is probably already decided, and the rest is theater..

[AlbertCory]

Everything is politics, then, you're saying?

Funny, because even Hammurabi thought it was worth writing down what was legal and what was not, so people would know.

[AlbertCory]

So what is the "context" on this?

[hn_throwaway_99]

I don't really agree with that - I've seen plenty of things that have been taken out of context, and portrayed actions in a really false light. It's really not hard to take some off the cuff email or Slack remark and present it as something like official company policy.

More importantly, though, I think anything a company says internally should be 100% irrelevant in an antitrust case. It's like the famous advice parents should give their kids when it comes to relationships: "Just ignore everything a potential partner says, and only focus on what they do."

I mean, it's not like corporations need to have any sort of "mens rea" to be found a monopoly abuser. IMO all that should be evaluated are the actual actions a corporation took to stifle competition. I don't really see why internal communications are relevant at all in these trials.

[willsmith72]

don't agree at all, internal communications are absolutely relevant

[hn_throwaway_99]

Care to explain why? When evaluating whether a company has abused its monopoly, why isn't it enough to simply look at its actions?

To be clear, I don't feel this way to give companies a break. I feel this way because whatever employees were thinking behind the scenes shouldn't matter. If a company locks up the defaults on pretty much all browsers, why isn't that fact alone enough to come to a conclusion?

[mongol]

On some level, I don't think a company has actions. Everything a company does are effects of what their employees do. Then it boils down to, is the action of an employee sanctioned by management? This you can only tell by looking at the internal communication.

[hn_throwaway_99]

But your response and the other responses here about "intent" highlight my exact point:

1. No individuals were charged with anything in this situation. When determining the remedy in an antitrust case, it's always about changes to the company structure or behavior: breaking them up, restricting areas where they can do business, etc. I think whether something was "sanctioned by management" is totally irrelevant here. Also, the types of decisions we're talking about here (acquiring companies, paying off other companies to be the default search engine, etc.) are usually so big they are always done with management approval. What, "Sorry, Bob in accounting accidentally paid Apple a billion dollars to be the default search engine on iOS"?

2. "Intent" here should be totally irrelevant. At the corporate level of behavior, "well, I didn't mean to shoot them" is a nonsensical response. Whether Google's "intent" was to crush the competition or to just vacuum up all the revenue for themselves, who cares? The outcome is the same, and what should be judged is whether the actions Google took as a company were anticompetitive.

[edgyquant]

Everything a human does are the effects of what its cells do. This logic doesn’t hold, we treat the entity as an entity and acknowledged that it’s intentions are often beyond the scope of its individual parts. Just as the grouping of cells have goals independent of any one, so does a group of men.

[mongol]

Yes it is a legal entity, but it does not have own motives. It is just a vehicle for human activities. You can't call a company to the witness stand, and you can't put it in jail. Even if you could, it would not suffer.

[didibus]

I'm guessing some actions that could be interpreted as abusive, could to some extent have been random. But internal communications tell you if they were random or planned out.

I think that maybe goes for going after the decision makers.

As for deciding if the company needs regulation or being broken up because it's operating as a monopoly, there I would agree with you. It wouldn't really matter if it just happened as an accident of the market, or as a planned outcome, if it creates a bad market dynamic, it should be corrected.

[rapind]

I imagine it has to do with intent and willfulness.

Not sure if that’s relevant or not in a monopoly case though.

[AlbertCory]

since Discovery is used in almost all civil and criminal actions:

You're proposing abolishing it but only in antitrust cases?

[netheril96]

The materials found during discovery are not always relevant. You can discover all of them, but then some of them shouldn't be presented to the court or jury.

[patmorgan23]

Intent(like possession) is 9/10ths of the law.

[FireBeyond]

I believe the original was “possession is 9 points of the law” and over time it has been bastardized into “nine tenths”.

[AlbertCory]

also, "intent" is never 9 points of the law, let alone 9/10.

it's one of the points.

[delecti]

> I've seen plenty of things that have been taken out of context, and portrayed actions in a really false light

And in those situations, the answer to "What context, exactly, is missing?" would be exculpatory. If it is out of context, the context would demonstrate that. If it's as damning as it seems, then "you're taking that out of context" will be demonstrated to be BS when context is provided.

[lazide]

And LA didn’t burn after the Rodney King verdict?

A lot of people don’t bother before deciding, despite the procedures.

[ekianjo]

> "out of context" is the standard BS answer to anything.

You are completely wrong on this one. People routinely take things out of context on purpose to defame others. Thats so common I am surprised you can make the opposite claim.

[AlbertCory]

I've asked in a bunch of places here "what IS the 'context', then?" No one has an answer.

[murderfs]

Why do you expect anyone here to answer you? You're not the judge, and presumably no one posting in this thread is an attorney representing Google in this case.

[AlbertCory]

why do I expect anyone to answer? They said, "out of context" as if there's some broader context that would put it in a different light. OK, what is it?

Otherwise, it's just empty legal boilerplate, i.e. performance art.