Happy Thanksgiving. This year, we’re thankful for the leadership at the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission who have mightily reinvigora

Between the Lines of Google Ad Tech's Closing Arguments

submited by

Style Pass

2024-11-28 12:00:05

Happy Thanksgiving. This year, we’re thankful for the leadership at the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission who have mightily reinvigorated Sherman Act Section 2 jurisprudence, proving that a law from 1890 can ensure fair and democratic markets today, tomorrow, and beyond.

This piece was written by Laurel Kilgour, Research Manager at the American Economic Liberties Project, who attended closing arguments earlier this week. I did some light editing. Let’s jump right in.

So began the last day of the antitrust trial targeting Google’s ad tech empire. Judge Leonie Brinkema was not wearing a powdered wig, but her snow-white hair, tucked into a neat bun and sneaking out in wispy tufts behind her ears, could be mistaken for one if you squinted just right from the packed back benches of the federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia. On this chilly late Fall day, she wore a red turtleneck under her black robes.

The evidentiary portion of the trial was long over. As copiously documented by Big Tech on Trial, over three weeks in September, the parties put their best foot forward on direct, grilled hostile witnesses, and entered hundreds if not thousands of exhibits into the record. The trial had been chopped in half from the expected six weeks by Brinkema’s relentless slashing of duplicative testimony (they don’t call the Eastern District of Virginia the “rocket docket” for nothing).