Google places a veil of secrecy over antitrust trial

Google managed to place a veil of secrecy over its antitrust trial. As many of you know, the Google vs DoJ antitrust trial is ongoing, and it has been that way since September 12. For a while now, however, the trial has been basically closed to the public.

Google basically managed to place a veil of secrecy over antitrust trial

Google managed to close off testimony and exhibits in the public trial, reports Prospect. All kinds of private documents are being thrown around the courtroom, and Google doesn’t want them to be public. The same goes with testimonies, it seems.

The company’s attorneys argue that publicizing private info will only create “clickbait” all over the Internet. It seems like Google’s strategy is working thus far, as the federal district court judge, Amit Mehta, is playing along.

Google has actually been doing this from the beginning of the trial. Most recently, the testimony of Apple senior executive, John Giannandrea, and portions of testimony from Google’s VP of finance, MIke Roszak, have been in private.

The Prospect reports that one of the attorneys representing the delegation of state attorneys general, who joined the DoJ in the lawsuit, said that the truncated public accessibility in the trial was “totally unprecedented”.

Not much info was publicized from Monday or Tuesday

The same practices continued during both sessions this week, on Monday and Tuesday. We’re getting only bits and pieces of info, and no real details from the testimonies at this point.

It remains to be seen if this practice will continue. As a reminder, this trial is expected to last for around two months, and it started on September 12. So, we still have a long way to go.

If Google ends up succeeding in keeping the documents and testimonies a secret, we won’t find out much until the very end. It is worth noting that the federal judge could change his mind at any point, though. So… there’s a chance we’ll start getting more information.

It is, however, understandable why Google wants to keep those documents private. It probably learned its lesson from Microsoft’s antitrust case from the 1990s, as bad headlines were all over the place.