Author: openjargon

• Google has faced numerous lawsuits over privacy, intellectual property, monopoly tactics, and more.
• Google is currently battling two key antitrust cases over its search engine and advertising tactics.
• Google also recently settled two class-action lawsuits concerning privacy and antitrust violations.

Google is one of the world's largest and most influential companies, and the most popular search engine by far. So it's no surprise that the search giant's rapidly evolving and boundary-pushing technology would attract litigation over the course of its 25-year history.

Google has been sued in dozens, if not hundreds of high-profile controversies over privacy, intellectual property, discrimination, advertising, and even defamation, and has racked up both wins and losses over the years.

Some of Google's most consequential legal cases have occurred in 2023 and 2024, including two major antitrust cases and several class-action lawsuits. Here's what you need to know about the biggest recent cases to land on Google's docket.

Why did the US government sue Google over antitrust violations?

The US government's battle against Google has resulted in two major antitrust cases that are both still ongoing. 

One case culminated in a landmark monopoly trial in the fall of 2023, which is still awaiting a verdict. The dispute centered on whether Google has illegally abused its monopoly over the search engine industry, spending billions of dollars each year to suppress competition. The US government argued that Google's business dealings have blocked innovation in the search business to the detriment of internet users. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified in the antitrust trial in October 2023, and defended instances in which Google pushed companies like Apple and other smartphone makers into revenue-sharing agreements that would make Google the default search engine on phones and computers.

The Google CEO even acknowledged on the stand that company executives knew that becoming the default search engine on smartphones "would lead to increased usage of our products and services."

The second major antitrust case against Google concerns its online advertising strategies, and is set to go to trial in September 2024. The US government has alleged that Google illegally abused its monopoly over the digital advertising market by acquiring its competitors and forcing website publishers to adopt Google's tools, such as Google Ads, thereby suppressing the rise of rival technologies.

Google has denied any wrongdoing in both cases. The search giant argued during its 2023 trial that Google dominates the search business because it's superior to its rivals, not because of its business dealings. Google has similarly denied the claims in the advertising-related monopoly case, saying its acquisitions were legal and actually enable innovative new advertising technologies, and that the federal government's lawsuit could undo years of industry progress.

What happens if Google loses its antitrust cases?

It's unclear who will win the antitrust case on Google's search engine. Judge Amit Mehta will be the one to decide the outcome, rather than a jury, and Mehta vigorously questioned both sides during closing arguments in May 2024.

If Google loses the lawsuit, Mehta is expected to take some sort of action that would boost competition in the search-engine business. Google could face consequences like fines, orders to adjust its business practices, or even a total ban on its contracts to make Google the default search engine.

Both antitrust cases carry potentially massive implications for internet users — Google could face sanctions that alter its operations so dramatically that it loses its ubiquity in the search and advertising industries, paving the way for new companies and technologies to flourish.

Google's antitrust cases will also likely influence the outcomes of other antitrust lawsuits the US government has filed against major tech companies. Currently, Amazon, Apple, and Meta all face similar antitrust lawsuits against their business practices that could threaten their market dominance.

What to know about Google's class-action settlements and who can claim money

Google has been the subject of two major class-action lawsuits that were resolved or nearing resolution in late 2023 and 2024.

One of the most hotly anticipated resolutions was that of a class-action case involving personal data collected from 136 million Google Chrome users. The lawsuit accused Google of tracking the internet activity of users who had switched to Google's "incognito" setting.

As part of a settlement agreement, Google said it would delete the search data collected from those 136 million users, which Google said was merely "old personal technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization."

Lawyers initially sought a $5 billion payout for consumers, but anyone expecting to receive a chunk of that money will need to sue Google individually to receive any damages. The settlement agreement for the class-action case did not include any monetary damages to be paid out by Google.

Google does, however, have to pay out roughly $700 million as part of a separate class-action case involving the Google Play Store. Attorneys general from five states accused Google of using monopoly tactics to box out competitors to the Google Play Store and limited users' ability to download Android apps from other app stores.

An estimated 102 million consumers were affected between August 16, 2016, and September 30, 2023, and are entitled to compensation of at least $2, the settlement agreement stipulated. Consumers who are eligible for the Google settlement don't need to submit any sort of claim to get that money, however. Consumers will receive automatic payments through PayPal or Venmo.

Google's battle over Europe's "right to be forgotten" laws

One of Google's biggest legal battles in the 2010s concerned the European Court of Justice's "right to be forgotten" ruling and whether Google was responsible for personal data that appears in its search results. Google lost its case in 2014, and the EU court ruled that individuals have the right to remove information about themselves from search engine results.

Under the ruling, Google must respond to legitimate requests from individuals to delist webpages from its search results. Larry Page, one of Google's founders and a former CEO, spoke out vehemently against the EU court's "right to be forgotten" ruling at the time, warning that repressive foreign governments could abuse the ruling.

However, in 2019, Google won a "right to be forgotten" victory in a subsequent EU court ruling, which stipulated that Google only has to delist content from search results in Europe, and the "right to be forgotten" does not apply globally.

Recent research has suggested that Google and Microsoft together have received some 150,000 "right to be forgotten" requests to delist search results each year since the EU court's ruling in 2014. The vast majority of the links targeted for delisting were from Facebook, X, and YouTube.

• A woman lived inside the rooftop sign of a Michigan grocery store for about a year, police say.
• Contractors working at the store found the woman, the Midland PD said.
• She'd decorated the space with a mini desk, flooring, pantry, and houseplant.

A woman spent about a year living inside the rooftop sign of a grocery store in Midland, Michigan, police say.

Brennon Warren, the public relations officer at Midland Police Department, told Business Insider that the woman was found on April 23 by contractors who discovered an extension cord on the roof. Police determined she had been living there for about a year, he said.

The Midland Daily News first reported on the woman being found.

Warren confirmed to BI that the woman was 34 and had a job. She'd decked out the space with a mini desk, flooring, pantry, and houseplant, he said.

Per ABC News, Warren said the woman also had a Keurig coffee maker, a printer, and a computer.

"She was homeless," he added. "It's a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign."

Warren told BI that it was unclear how the woman accessed the roof. However, he said that once on the roof she was able to enter the inside of the sign using a 3'x4' access door.

He added that the woman had refused an offer for contact information for housing assistance in the area and that police didn't know where she had been living since she left the roof.

The woman wasn't formally charged, he said.

Warren told The Midland Daily News that police had nicknamed her the "Rooftop Ninja."

"I've never seen anything like this before in my career," he told the publication.

Little is known about the woman, including what led her to living on the rooftop.

The Michigan Homeless Policy Council estimated that in 2022, about 32,589 homeless people lived in the state, an 8% increase on the previous year, which it attributed to an "uncertain housing market" and the winding down of pandemic-related programs.

Family Fare is owned by SpartanNash and has 80 stores, mainly in Michigan.

A spokesperson for Family Fare said the company was "proud" of its associates for responding to the situation "with the utmost compassion and professionalism.

"Ensuring there is ample safe, affordable housing continues to be a widespread issue nationwide that our community needs to partner in solving," they added.

• Jeff Bezos recently advised Adam Neumann to speak last in meetings.
• Neumann said he's evolving his leadership approach in his apartment company, Flow.
• Bezos' "speak last" strategy is supported by organizational psychologists like Adam Grant.

Jeff Bezos recently gave Adam Neumann some unsolicited advice: Speak last in meetings, a leadership style espoused by a leading organizational psychologist.

Neumann said Bezos came up to him with the recommendation after the WeWork cofounder spoke at an event.

"I was so happy he wanted to give me any type of advice," Neumann said on stage at Thursday's Bloomberg Tech Summit in San Francisco.

He said he's evolving as a leader at Flow, his apartment company.

"I have investors around the table who are not only comfortable pushing back, I think they like it," Neumann said on Thursday. Flow's main backer is famed venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, while WeWork's primary investor is Japanese titan SoftBank.

At WeWork, Neumann was famous for his eccentric leadership style. His alcohol-fueled executive meetings could stretch well into the night, Business Insider previously reported. He often talked about superpowers — including with former BI editors in a 2019 interview — and about the importance of authenticity.

"The way you build a relationship is authenticity, with really connecting to the person. And listening," Neumann told BI in 2019.

Bezos, meanwhile, is known for much more corporate leadership, including tightly orchestrated meetings. On a December podcast with Lex Fridman, he highlighted the importance of leaders holding back. Bezos said he aims for a culture that allows junior staff to overrule their senior counterparts when data supports their thinking.

Bezos recommended that the most junior person participates in a meeting first, and then the meeting flows in order of ascending seniority.

"I know from experience that if I speak first, even very strong-willed, highly-intelligent, high-judgment participants in that meeting will wonder, 'Well if Jeff thinks that, I came in this meeting thinking one thing, but maybe I'm not right,'" Bezos said on the podcast.

Bezos' strategy isn't new — organizational psychologists like Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, have long championed the idea.

A representative for Neumann did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside normal business hours.

• Jack Dorsey said Twitter's board — and its activist investor — prompted him to plan an exit from the firm.
• "I was happy to see it end," Dorsey said of the board when Elon Musk took Twitter private.
• Before leaving Twitter in 2021, Dorsey faced pressure from investors looking to replace him as CEO.

Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter, slammed the board that oversaw the social media firm during his tenure at its helm, saying the group had "always been a problem."

"I was extremely challenged by my board," Dorsey said during an interview published Thursday by Mike Solana, the head of marketing for VC firm Founders Fund and editor of digital media brand Pirate Wires.

"The board has always been a problem at that company, and I was happy to see it end," Dorsey continued. "But there was only one way for it to end, which is going private. And I think that's the greatest act."

Twitter was sold for $44 billion in October 2022 to Elon Musk, who took the platform private, radically changed its approach, and rebranded it to X. By then, Dorsey had already stepped down from the company, leaving it in 2021 to its new CEO, Parag Agrawal.

Dorsey told Solana that earlier on, he'd tried to bring Musk onto Twitter's board but was stopped twice. That was partially why he decided to ditch the platform, he said.

In April 2022, Musk joined Twitter's board of directors after taking a 9.2% stake in the company.

But Dorsey said he was also unhappy with the board because of an activist investor seeking to boot him, he said.

"I didn't want to be on a board with an activist," he said. I didn't want to run a company like that. It's just a Wall Street mess. It's not creative, it's diminishing."

That investor was Elliott Management, an investment firm led by Paul Singer that wanted to replace Dorsey because he was spending time on his other venture, Square, while running Twitter as CEO.

Dorsey said he offered to step down, an offer that was rejected by the board. Still, he said Elliot Management's presence took a toll on his relationship with the firm.

"So at that point, I'm like, okay, I have to plan an exit," Dorsey told Solana. "It's not going to be right now, but it has to be over the next two years, because I just don't want to live this way."

His comments align with reports that a fed-up Dorsey was receptive to Musk buying Twitter and revamping the platform.

During the interview, Dorsey didn't address allegations that he was practically an "absentee" at both Twitter and Square because he was split between companies. He was accused of being more of an advisor at either firm than the decision-maker and CEO he needed to be.

Dorsey made his recent remarks just after quitting Bluesky, a social media platform he helped create with an open-source protocol. He then urged users to use X, calling it "freedom technology."

Since taking over, Musk has pushed for X to become an ideal "digital town square" free of censorship, reversing prior bans on controversial figures such as former President Donald Trump and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

The billionaire's repeated controversial remarks eventually led to major advertisers leaving X, though Dorsey has also said he believes that the path forward for the platform is to ditch advertising as a main revenue stream.

• More companies would move to Miami if there were more private schools, said Barry Sternlicht.
• Miami's business-friendly environment and tax savings have attracted companies like Citadel.
• However, the city faces a private school shortage due to the recent population boom.

One hiccup prevents Miami from attracting more money and talent, according to billionaire real estate fund manager and Miami transplant Barry Sternlicht.

The city doesn't have enough private schools, he said in an interview on Thursday with Bloomberg Television.

"There are a lot of companies that would move down if they could get their employees' kids into schools, which is impossible," said Sternlicht, the CEO of Starwood Capital Group.

Sternlicht announced in 2018 that he would move Starwood from Connecticut to Miami, and the firm relocated during the pandemic. The company managed $115 billion of assets and has 5,000 employees globally, according to its website.

While he expected better weather and tax savings, Sternlicht was pleasantly surprised by how welcoming Florida is to business, he said in the interview.

Sternlicht is one of several real estate moguls and billionaires who moved their company from the northeast to Miami in recent years.

In 2022, Citadel and Citadel Securities founder Ken Griffin moved the headquarters of both of his companies from Chicago to Miami after complaining about Illinois taxes and politics. Late last year, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced he was relocating from Seattle to Miami, a move that could save him $600 million in taxes.

Florida is one of only nine US states with no state income tax, and high-earners moving to the state are often called "tax refugees."

The shortage of private schools in the area is due to a recent population boom in Miami and the state overall.

Florida's population jumped by 1.9% from 2021 to 2022, with a net gain of 417,000 new residents, more than any other state in the country. Miami saw the number of millionaires rise 78% in the last decade, to 35,300, per a report released Tuesday by immigration consultancy Henley & Partners.

The spike is in part due to employees of Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, D1 Capital Partners, and other firms that have moved in. High-earning employees want to send their children to elite schools that match the quality of New York area's schools, BI previously reported.

Newcomers to the city face long waitlists to get into elite schools because of the small number of such schools in the city and developers dropping plans to build new ones.

Despite the school challenge, Sternlicht said that Miami's growth story is not over.

"I don't think Miami has peaked. I think Miami and Florida have cycles because they get overbuilt, but they're ever-higher cycles," he told Bloomberg. "You just have to have stamina to stay with it."

• In a new interview, Jack Dorsey explained Elon Musk's seemingly chaotic decisions at X.
• The mass layoffs, advertiser exodus, and blue-check revamp fit into a push for free speech, Dorsey said.
• It's all part of ditching Twitter's "core, critical sin" of advertiser control, he said.

Elon Musk's handling of Twitter has been panned as erratic. But the platform's cofounder, Jack Dorsey, is defending his fellow billionaire's approach, saying Musk's sweeping job cuts and ditching of advertisers made sense for a shift toward free speech.

Dorsey spoke with Mike Solana, the head of marketing for VC firm Founders Fund and editor of digital media brand Pirate Wires, in an interview published Thursday. Dorsey said he shared Musk's goal of creating an internet bastion for free speech. But Dorsey said Twitter had been weighed down by its revenue model.

Twitter chose brand advertising as its main source of income, a "core, critical sin" that exposed the platform's moderation to the whims of corporations effectively financing the social-media platform, Dorsey said.

"And when you're entirely dependent on that, if a brand like P&G or Unilever doesn't like what's happening on the platform, and they threaten to pull the budget, which accounts for like 20% of your revenue? You have no choice," Dorsey told Solana.

Musk, who rebranded Twitter to X, triggered an advertiser exodus late in 2023 when he appeared to endorse an antisemitic post — the tipping point for many organizations after months of Musk's controversial and confusing remarks.

The Tesla and SpaceX owner appeared nonchalant when big players such as Disney, IBM, and Apple left his platform, publicly telling advertisers to "go fuck yourself" and calling them the "greatest oppressors of free speech."

Pundits were shocked. But Dorsey said Musk made the right choice to stick by his vision for a censorship-free "digital town square" and reduce the emphasis on advertisers.

"You have to build up a lot more than advertising to make that model work. You have to build subscriptions, which Elon is doing. You have to build commerce," Dorsey said.

That addresses another sore point for fans of old Twitter. Shortly after taking over, Musk revamped its subscription service by giving blue-check verification to paid users and aggressively promoting monthly memberships.

Building a different business model

To many, Musk seemed to be axing Twitter's entire business model. But Dorsey said the bleeding is part of decoupling from big advertisers' control and finding new revenue streams.

"Twitter was a $5 billion a year business," Dorsey said. "I don't know what it is now, but it's obviously nowhere near that, right? These are choices that can be made, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be the same level of business for quite some time, until you figure out a completely different model around it."

The mass layoffs at Twitter, in which Musk slashed global headcount by 80%, also made sense to Dorsey, who said the majority of employees were in sales.

Dorsey's comments come as he quit Bluesky, a platform he helped create after leaving Twitter, and told users to use Musk's X instead.

He then scrapped his entire Twitter follow list except for Musk, Edward Snowden, and the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Twitter cofounder has generally spoken approvingly of Musk, though he's previously said he felt Musk lacked finesse in handling big changes at X, like the messy, abrupt layoffs that led to lawsuits from former employees.

"It all looked fairly reckless," Dorsey said in June of Musk's moves.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, taking the company private. Less than six months later — after imposing wide-scale changes — he reportedly said that it was worth less than half of what he bought it for.