Thread by @jason_kint

surprise. bipartisan state attorneys general (17 in total) filed their third amended complaint against Google late Friday night. This is the lawsuit where my initial reaction in December was, "Google is screwed." It's only gotten worse as evidence has been unsealed. /1

We've done a full comparison between 2nd and 3rd complaints. A ton of clarity added for charges which are both deeply technical but deeply concerning. I don't see how Department of Justice delays filing their own lawsuit. And the Facebook collusion charges should be criminal. /2

The lawsuit even more clearly lays out the conduct and harms which impact advertisers, publishers, and consumers. If you want to understand how a company generates approaching $1 billion of advertising revenue per day by extracting welfare from everyone else - here you go. /3

Despite there being probably a dozen pieces of jaw-dropping evidence in the lawsuit, the deal with Facebook to allegedly rig the market and "kill" a competitive threat to Google are still towards the top. (note: the red for example is new copy from the amended suit). /4

The Google and Facebook deal is also known as "Count IV - Unlawful Agreement in Violation of Section I of the Sherman Act" which should be criminal if the allegations hold up. Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Google's Philipp Schindler executed the deal. /5

Much of the new material seems focused in the areas around how auctions work, how Google's dominance on all sides of the market plus access to the data, has been used to enrich Google and kill off competition. Some new evidence here now sealed - we look forward to reading. /6

Here is a link to my master thread on the case from December 2020. /7

And don't miss the thread regarding the recently unsealed version of the complain which allowed us to see some of the direct evidence involving some of the most senior executives. /8