Comment by iam-TJ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iam-TJ | Hacker News Reader

Title had to be trimmed to fit 80-character limit, from "Google's and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves".

This reports on an amended complaint filed Friday 14th January 2022.

"On Friday, Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint [0 PDF] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages. The fortified filing adds additional information about previous revelations and extends the scope of concern to cover in-app advertising in greater detail."

...

"The third amended complaint explains, "Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer [REDACTED] was explicit that '[t]his is a big deal strategically' in an email thread that included Facebook CEO [REDACTED]. When the economic terms had taken their form, the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO: 'We're nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward.' Facebook CEO wanted to meet with COO [REDACTED] and his other executives before making a decision."

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...

Good thing they redacted the Facebook CEO. He might not enjoy the negative public attention.

It looks like the court has roughly the same standard as facebook when it comes to anonymized data.

Good thing they redacted the Facebook CEO. He might not enjoy the negative public attention.

The local newspaper's version of the story was nice enough to name Sundar Pichai by name.

It also included a poor response from Google which was along the lines of, "He signs agreements all the time, but doesn't know what's in them, and so he's not really responsible in any way for this." Which is exactly the opposite of what the newly revised documents show.

It's also very telling when a company's PR department pivots from protecting the company to protecting an individual at that company.

"He signs agreements all the time, but doesn't know what's in them, and so he's not really responsible in any way for this."

That’s exactly the point why he needs to sign to get his written approval. Defending him that we didn’t tell him everything would be pretty concerning.

If you are the boss, you are responsible for everything the company does.

You don't know? It's your job to know.

can I use this excuse to get out of all my legal obligations and not pay my mortgage or my ad bills to Google?

Anyone want to weight in on how this falls legally? Price fixing can be a felony, and result in jail time[1]. Not sure if this falls under that, or similar anti-trust laws.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/06/20/p...

The proposed "win rate guarantee" Google gave Facebook appears to be the same economically as Google buying up a bunch of ad slots, and then giving them to Facebook for free.

Assuming the same was done in reverse, this is both companies reducing the pool of ad slots available to others, and pushing up the price.

It would be equivalent to one oil company giving lots of oil to a competitor to destroy, and that competitor doing the same in return.

So price fixing?

It’s all civil law right now. It’s doubtful that criminal law would be very useful. First, because the standard of proof would make criminal charges much harder to sustain. Second, because, judging from all those emails, it’s much more of a group effort between and inside these organizations.

Group efforts can definitely be subject to criminal investigations. Look, for example, at Enron.

It would be great if finally at least someone from this group got some serious jail time. It would restore my faith in humanity. I'd vote for Suckerberg, but I'd settle for Brin too.

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