Big Tech on Trial: How BIG will be covering the Google Trial

This newsletter is putting a reporter into the courtroom for the Google monopoly trial. You can get a daily update of the biggest antitrust case in a generation at Big Tech on Trial.

Tomorrow, the Google monopolization trial, which is the biggest antitrust case in a generation, starts. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been working on arranging something special. The details have been finalized, so I’m now excited to announce that I’ve hired a reporter to attend the trial and provide daily coverage on a special newsletter called “Big Tech on Trial”.

At Big Tech on Trial, we’ll be providing daily coverage and analysis of the witnesses, the arguments, the judge, the politics and the media narratives. The first post is already up, a discussion of how to understand litigation itself, which is not just as some technical legal activity, but also the telling of a morality play.

The Google Monopoly Trial as a Morality Play

If you’re interested in reading Big Tech on Trial, sign up here. You’ll get a free newsletter every day in your inbox. The articles will also be available on www.BigTechOnTrial.com.

This is the "E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C., which is one area where the evil nerds who rule the world work. Photo by Ken Lund is licensed under CC by SA 2.0.

Here are some more details about the plan for Big Tech on Trial and the reporter I’ve hired, Yosef Weitzman.

If you read my earlier preview of the Google trial – or have been reading coverage of it elsewhere — you know how important this trial is. It could determine the future of artificial intelligence, search, newspapers, antitrust law, and innovation. It will set precedent for monopolization cases in a lot of other industries. And of course, the bad guys know it. The rumor is Google is putting together a war room with dozens of PR professionals to spin the outcome, and I’ve heard from reporters that they are being lavished with attention like never before. Dozens of media outlets are previewing the trial. As just one example, I was quoted in the New Yorker today discussing its impact on the deployment of AI.

And Google’s PR team is already earning its pay, planting a story in the New York Times by Steve Lohr about how Google isn’t the big bad guy that Microsoft was in the 1990s, and besides, these days no one really cares about this case. Lohr covered the Microsoft case, and seems singularly unaware that there in fact has been a much larger cultural argument about big tech and monopolies over the last ten years than there ever was around Microsoft.

But this coverage matters, because the fight is as much about how the public and members of Congress understand the trial as it is the legal outcomes themselves.

In other words, this trial isn’t just important because of the potential outcome, but also because the public and lawmakers are paying close attention. We’re going to learn a lot about how the internet itself was shaped, advertising, the coercion and power plays in board rooms, the ugly deals between Google and Apple to divide up the world between them, and how billionaires fight with each other when all the money in the world is at stake. So regardless of the final verdict, the facts that come out at trial will help shape the future direction our elected leaders and judges take in addressing our increasingly monopolistic order. The point is, there’s a lot of bullshit in politics, but this trial is the big one, where the debates over big business that have gone on for years meet the law.

That’s why I wanted to have someone in the courtroom every day, someone who will be contributing to the public record that is built around this trial. Our representative will be there to keep an eye on Google’s lawyers, to give us a perspective on the weird stuff going on in the courtroom, and to offer observations on the judge and government lawyers that we won’t otherwise get. This public record is even more vital now in the face of Google’s various efforts to suppress the public’s access to the information that will come out, and the judge’s unfortunate ruling against an audio live-stream.

So sign up here. It’s gonna be awesome.

Now a bit about Yosef, the reporter I’ve hired: he’s a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School with a pre-law school background in journalism.

During college, he worked as a sports editor for his college paper and also reported multiple articles for Forbes as both an intern and freelance contributor. In law school, he was a senior editor for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and took two courses in antitrust law. He’s based in Philadelphia but will be temporarily relocating to DC for this project.

Yosef will be in court to watch and report on the trial every day starting tomorrow (September 12), which is Day 1 of the trial. He does have a job at a law firm starting in mid-November, so his coverage will unfortunately end in November if the trial is still going. The trial is currently projected to be done by then, but trials always carry a risk of delay — magnified only by the looming possibility of a government shutdown at the end of the month. Whatever happens, Yosef will be there to cover the trial for as long as he can.

I’m really excited about Big Tech on Trial and I know Yosef is too. Both of us will be eager to get feedback on the coverage after the first few days of trial, but if you have any thoughts or questions you’d like to share with Yosef before the trial starts, you can email him at bigtechontrial@substack.com. He’ll also be on Twitter — you can follow him @BigTechOnTrial. And don’t forget to sign up for Big Tech on Trial.

As I said above, Yosef has already posted his first article sharing some of the big themes he’ll be following as the trial gets underway. That will go out in an email to Big Tech on Trial subscribers later today, but you can check it out on the Big Tech on Trial website now.

Finally, I want to send out a special thank you to paid subscribers of BIG. You made it possible not only to publish this newsletter, but also to invest in this special project and hire Yosef. As ugly as politics seems sometimes, we do live in a democracy, so how the public perceives and understands policy does ultimately determine what our government does. Explaining the details of antitrust trials is a key way to do broad educational campaigns. So thanks for helping nudge America ever so slightly in a more positive direction.

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Thanks for reading! Your tips make this newsletter what it is, so please send me tips on weird monopolies, stories I’ve missed, or other thoughts. And if you liked this issue of BIG, you can sign up here for more issues, a newsletter on how to restore fair commerce, innovation and democracy. And consider becoming a paying subscriber to support this work, or if you are a paying subscriber, giving a gift subscription to a friend, colleague, or family member.

cheers,

Matt Stoller