In a company under global scrutiny for ethical lapses and a harmful core biz model, you don’t place your loyal lieutenant Andrew Bosworth in charge of all tech unless you’re preparing for war. Act accordingly. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
This is the language of a company in PR crisis mode. As far as I know, Elliot Schrage (took fall for Definers) also still “works there.” A full exit leads to more questions - this is window dressing and a big deal.
And not to state the obvious but this would make me very uncomfortable if I testified to @CommonsDCMS.
ps it's a comically bad idea for the new internal "Privacy Organization" - set up as a result of the $5 billion settlement - reporting into Andrew Bosworth. mlexmarketinsight.com/news-hub/edito…
And a reminder Bosworth writes memo Facebook leaks. I always thought this one was prob co-written and leaked intentionally in Jan 2020 to shape minds after the FTC settlement. It ran in NYT. A few refreshers. Bosworth also likes to discredit the press similar to Zuckerberg.
He’s willing to rewrite history into a narrative more friendly for his company.
And state things that are blatantly false.
And in the spirit of last week’s Facebook Files from WSJ, he also hates the comparisons to nicotine although as @Moonalice pointed out nicotine never undermined democracy or incited genocide etc etc.
and worth watching this brief video for a look into the person now running technology for Facebook and all of its global impact.
Bam. There is it. US Department of Justice has filed - requesting divestiture of Chrome as a remedy for court's finding against Google. Android at risk, too. /1
As it relates to Android, here is how DOJ puts it. Forced divestiture is option that "swiftly, efficiently, and decisively strikes at the locus of some anticompetitive conduct at issue here" but we're ok with tight behavioral remedies with option to divest if they don't work. /2
Revenue sharing for search default and/or preferential treatment - dead. Google's tens of billions to Apple - dead (last I saw it's about 15% of Apple's profits). Reminder, this all needs to be argued and approved by Court and then will get appealed. Still far off. /3
KA-BOOM. So when Google and its proxies (see so-called Chamber of Progress), friendly academics and analysts continue to suggest Chrome has nothing to do with the case, please ask them how many days they were at the trial. 1/3
This is super important. It’s an area @DCNorg (premium publishers) are intensely interested and concerned they get right around ability to restrict. The Court and trial made it clear they understood its importance during trial. We’ll be reading closely on Wednesday. 2/3
Here is the full report from Bloomberg who consistent with the entire trial showed up every day, did the hard work, and now got the massive scoop ahead of Wed filing. 3/3 bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
throwback time at Supreme Court today. Remember when Facebook looked away while data was harvested and sold to Cambridge Analytica (and other firms) ahead of 2016 election then covered it up? Topic finally hit SCOTUS - 10am (Kavanaugh not recusing would be outrageous). 1/3
basically facebook is trying to argue why it didn't need to disclose the "breach" despite never confirming it (2015-2018 which included elections) ahead of scandal going global in 2018. They've since somewhat successfully rewritten history on what happened thru soft press. 2/3
here is a link to oral arguments (supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments…) and a thread into more info. Justice Kavanaugh is best buds with a Facebook exec who was at center of scandal and cover-up. One hour of arguments (US Solicitor General, too). 3/3 x.com/jason_kint/sta…
Just before the clock struck midnight, the Dept of Justice and Google filed their updated Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in the adtech antitrust trial ahead of closing arguments (Nov 25th/EDVA). /1
Google clocked in at 787 pages, DOJ at 422. Much more reading but I found the most enjoyable sections to be DOJ's reminders of Google's evidence abuses along with killing the duty to deal arguments Google has been pumping through its tentacles of paid proxies. /2
"Google chose to train its employees about how to abuse the attorney-client privilege and destroy documents." This was a big freaking deal before the trial started, in all of Google's other antitrust trials and it will be here, too. Don't forget it. /3
Google break-up talks. Big hearing tomorrow fighting over discovery. One question unanswered is... YouTube. Where does it sit? Almost no mention in any of the trials (app store, adtech, search) although arguably one of the most significant "fruits" of G's monopoly abuses. /1
I use the word, "fruit," intentionally as case law says one of the four critical objectives in remedies is denying them and it's fairly unequivocal YouTube is YouTube due to the query+click scale of Google's 90%+ market share in search. YouTube is now #2 discovery surface. /2
Why hasn't YouTube come up more? I would argue it clearly wasn't needed to prove the liability in the trials. And Google's legal defenses have focused on trying to muddy the relevant market. Google worked hard but failed to bring in video (think TV, Netflix, TikTok) in market. /3
There it is. Confirmation directly from the Department of Justice that divestiture of Chrome, Android and/or Play are all on the table as remedies to Google's antitrust abuses. US DOJ's remedies framework just posted. Their final proposal is due Nov 20th. /1
It's a fairly broad, ten pages that starts by reiterating the findings of the DC Court and the duty to seek an order not only addressing the existing harms from Google's illegal conduct but - this is critically important - prevent recurrence going forward. /2
here are the listed findings in a tl;dr format. Note the point of illegal conduct for over ten years and the importance of scale and data. /3