[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.

[AlbertCory]

search on "Corporate death penalty"