Judge in US/Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine

This is the only line in the link that supports the headline, and - seeing as how it includes the author's judgment about the facts but does not include any of the actual facts - I find it extremely unconvincing.

That doesn't mean the headline is wrong, but it's bad journalism to skip facts and just substitute your own judgments instead. I normally expect better from Ars.

Did the judge interrupt opening to ask a question? If so, what was the question? If not, what does it mean to "appear[] briefly confused"? Did he have a particular look on his face? Don't bother looking in the linked article for the answer to these questions, because you won't find it.

Like if it was a medical case are we going to mock the judge for not knowing the obvious difference between a hemangioma and a hematoma?

The lawyers are expected to explain their case enough that the Judge can understand it.

> Mehta even appeared briefly confused by some of the references to today's tech, unable to keep straight if Mozilla was a browser or a search engine.

It's not implausible to be confused about what Mozilla is. There is Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation, and even Mozilla China. Then, there was Mozilla Suite which had a "Navigator": Mozilla's browser. Then the browser was named Phoenix. Now it is Firefox, or more correctly "Mozilla Firefox".

Granted, it still bad that the judge deciding such things couldn't learn enough of a background there to keep things straight, but it's also not exactly what the title describes either. So feels a little click-bait-y.

I would love to read it and see if this headline is accurate, or if the judge was just trying to clarify a confusing argument from a lawyer.

> He also appeared unclear about how SEM works and struggled to understand the options for Microsoft to promote Bing ads outside of Google's SEM tools.

I mean, same? I am a software engineer and I don't really know what this sentence means. This is the opening statements, I don't think the judge is already supposed to be a domain expert.

I think it's the job of the lawyers to explain, but the phrasing here seems to be putting any failure on the judge.

If you're a journalist writing like that, about a judge on a major case, during opening statements, IMHO, the judge had better have been eating paste and flinging dung at the courtroom.

Otherwise, show some respect for the process. Chronologies and timelines, who's who, what's what, domain-specific information... presumably these occur in many cases, and often need explaining and tracking.