Thread by @jason_kint

Department of Justice has now posted its hundreds of great slides from closing arguments. I’ll share 13 slides that tell story imho captured by this list.
First, if search defaults don’t matter, why pay approx $30B, 40% of revenue to maintain them? 1/13

DOJ cleverly took this sentence from the DC circuit opinion in U.S. vs Microsoft and replaced it with Google’s search defaults story in red. “Fits like a glove” as they said to Court on Friday. Hard to argue. 2/13

The story on importance of Google’s data harvesting to monopoly maintenance was crystal clear so let’s move on to how DOJ alleges Google was able to use its market power to impact ad prices which drive much of their revenues. 3/13

Google would call a “code yellow” when it needed to tune its pricing knobs (levers) by rolling out tests / “launches” to get to revenue targets according to the allegations and senior exec emails we saw in the Fall. 4/13

Profiting from a price increase of more than 5% is an important test in monopoly land so these two slides stand out. Wait for the next one. 5/13

Yes, it gets worse for Google. And as you’ll see momentarily Google was able to maintain its profit margins as its only material marginal cost for those ads is passing along that 40% to Apple or whomever Google is paying off for search defaults. 6/13

This answer stands out when Google tries to argue its price increases are justified by its unilateral self-assessment on quality increases. Advertisers: Google monopoly power decides it’s “fair” to charge you more. 7/13

If this isn’t making you angry as an advertiser thinking your bids are the only thing impacting pricing, it’s “intentional.”
When it’s controversial, they might not tell you, may even not tell their own employees and put fancy code names on it. 8/13

There is a certain level of exuberance and arrogance if you recall some of the decks from discovery in the Fall. At least the ones that didn’t get tripped up by ‘fake privilege.’ 9/13

Remember Superman? As the Court noted, there isn’t a single mention of competition and how it might react in these ‘adventures in pricing’ emails and decks which is a pretty clear sign of a problem. 10/13

And that’s how a monopoly can have steady revenue growth and constant margins. And as noted, the margin didn’t grow because TAC (traffic acquisition cost) has increased significantly from paying Apple and friends for defaults. Closing the loop on the case. 11/13

A monopolist can raise prices without consideration of competition. Don’t say Facebook or TikTok or Amazon, those arguments are dead in Court. Happy to explain. 12/13

And if you want to know why Google’s surveillance advertising has been so good to it and not so good for everyone, here you go. You would be shocked at what Google rolls out as its defense of “innovation.” Cheers. 13/13

If you made it this far and asking about last bullet, here. 14/13