Google’s defense kicks off with messy “spaghetti football,” judge calls first testimony “tainted”

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The Google ad tech trial enters its third week today. On Friday, the Department of Justice called its last witness, Dr. Robin Lee , professor of economics at Harvard, who broke down conclusions from a 190-page report he authored on Google’s key anticompetitive behavior, which had been corroborated by several other testimonies over the past two weeks.

That afternoon, Google’s attorney Karen Dunn kick-started the corporation’s defense by calling Scott Sheffer, Google’s vice president of partnerships, as the first witness. With the intent to counter the DOJ’s relevant market definition, Sheffer set out to illustrate Google’s own version of the “ad tech ecosystem” — on the fly.

On a large screen, another Google lawyer operated slides that drew lines between Google’s ad tech products and other competitors following Sheffer’s directions. A slide, which started with a couple of boxes on each side, soon became confusing. Sheffer characterized the finished picture as “spaghetti football” that depicted a “fluid industry.”

Google's "market definition" that many in the court room tried to capture on their notebooks. Download the original file here.

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