How a smartarse stunt might cost Google billions

Last year, Google pulled a move only a trillion-dollar giant would try. It literally wrote the US government a cashier’s cheque for a little over $2 million so it could dodge a jury in the Justice Department’s ad-tech monopoly case and face a judge alone.

By paying the damages the DOJ said it was owed, Google turned the whole thing into a bench trial in Virginia - no unpredictable jurors, just one judge.

It looked clever at the time, but it’s now turning into a long-term headache. That ruling, and the cheque behind it, are ammunition for a growing line-up of publishers, advertisers, and ad-tech rivals now chasing Google for potentially tens of billions in damages.

Joshua Hafenbrack, a Justice Department trial lawyer on the Google search monopoly case, joins us to explain why he thinks that strategy created what he calls “a devastating long-term risk”.

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