Last week, Google sent the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) a check, intending to settle any damages claims from the lawsuit against its alleged online advertising monopoly. By doing so, the tech giant hopes to avoid a jury trial.
The lawsuit over the tech giant’s alleged online ad monopoly should take a different turn with this check than the DoJ has in mind. The prosecutor wants a jury verdict and a judge’s decision for this trial, which starts in September. Google now hopes that by satisfying in advance any claims for damages from the U.S. government, this will prevent the trial before a jury and that only the competition judge will rule.
‘Jury trial takes too much time’
According to Google, the DoJ would spend a lot of time during a jury trial explaining and ” educating” the jury on how the ad monopoly was created and works. This would unnecessarily prolong the trial. Therefore, settling the claims and getting a ruling from a judge alone is much more efficient in the tech giant’s view.
The amount of money the check in question covers is unknown. Experts estimate the possible amount of damage claims between $100 million and $300 million. This would be much less than the amount the DoJ has currently spent on experts in the case. Also, Reuters writes that the damages to be claimed could still be less than $1 million.
DoJ response
The DoJ has not officially responded to Google’s request and payment, but a court filing presented after the check suggests that the plaintiff does not intend to amend this lawsuit. In addition, another request to conduct this case through a jury trial was reportedly filed separately.
Ultimately, the DoJ wants this lawsuit to get the tech giant to sell its dominant ad tool suite.
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