This keeps corporate trials out of the public eye, which reassures judges who defer to further corporate demands for opacity without facing an outcry.

That's a tactic that serves #Google well. When the company was dragged into court by the #DOJ #AntitrustDivision, it demanded - and received - a veil of secrecy that is especially ironic given the company's promise "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful":

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

11/

The reason Dayen is writing about Agri Stats now is that the #DoJ #AntitrustDivision has brought an antitrust suit against them. This is part of a *wave* of antitrust actions brought by Biden's DoJ and #FTC, who, along with his #NLRB, are shaping up to be the most pugnacious, public-interest force against corporate power since the Reagan administration:

https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/29124-doj-sues-agri-stats-for-complicity-in-meat-market-manipulation

All this enforcement isn't a coincidence.

18/

Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against #antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the #DOJ #AntitrustDivision are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.

Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.

16/

The #DoJ #AntitrustDivision case against #Google is the (first) trial of the century, reviving the ancient and noble practice of fighting monopolies with courts, not empty platitudes.

The trial is *incredible*, and #YosefWeitzman's reporting on #BigTechOnTrial is required reading. I'm following it closely (thankfully, there's a fulltext #RSS feed):

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/what-makes-google-great

28/

On a related subject, the the DoJ #AntitrustDivision has brought the most important tech anti-monopoly case of the century, charging Google with monopolizing search:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/technology/modern-internet-first-monopoly-trial-us-google-dominance.html

Part of the #DOJ case turns on the fact that Google goes to *extraordinary* lengths to keep you from every *trying* another search engine, paying out more than *$45 billion every year* to be the default search on every device, program and service you might use.

28/

Or they can take the deal, get the new fund at a 40% discount - and the PE boss gets $60m/year for the next ten years, instead of the $20m they were getting before the continuation fund deal.

PE is devouring the productive economy and making the world's richest people even richer. The one bright light? The FTC and #DoJ #AntitrustDivision just published new merger guidelines that would make the PE acquire/debt-load/asset-strip model illegal:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/07/ftc-doj-seek-comment-draft-merger-guidelines

14/

The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this "independence." The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointemnts to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That's how you get *incredible* appointments like #LinaKhan at the #FTC and #JonathanKanter at #DoJ #AntitrustDivision and #RohitChopra at the #CFPB.

9/