A senior Google government as soon as likened the corporate’s search promoting enterprise to promoting medicine, calling it “one of the world’s greatest business models ever created” for the reason that firm can “ignore” customers and give attention to producing income from promoting.
Michael Roszak, vice chairman for finance at Alphabet Inc.’s Google, wrote the notes throughout a July 2017 coaching Google provided on communications.
“Search advertising is one of the world’s greatest business models ever created,” Roszak wrote, including that there have been solely “illicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) that could rival these economics.”
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Google’s enterprise can successfully “ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics,” Roszak wrote, provide and demand. This allowed the corporate to “ignore the demand side of the equation (users and queries) and only focus on supply side of advertisers.”
Because Google “made smart marketing/distribution investments to get our product everywhere,” Roszak wrote, “we could essentially tear the economics textbook in half.”
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The document was used as a piece of evidence in the Justice Department’s antitrust case in opposition to Google, difficult a sequence of contracts the place Google pays internet browsers and smartphone markets to be the default search engine. The authorities is in search of to show that Google engaged in anticompetitive ways to take care of its dominant place. Google denies the allegations.
Roszak testified on the Justice Department’s trial final week, however the authorities faraway from the online public entry to emails, charts and inner shows after Google protested. The company started reposting reveals Wednesday after Judge Amit Mehta brokered a compromise to create a process for his or her posting. Roszak’s notes had been solely made publicly out there late Thursday.
The notes had been created for a course on communications, Roszak mentioned final week, although he couldn’t recall if he gave a presentation on the topic. Roszak mentioned he by no means despatched the doc to anybody else at Google.
“This whole document is full of hyperbole and exaggeration, because there was no business purpose associated with it, it was part of the presentations course and trying out some of the tips they were offering there,” Roszak mentioned, including that he was “saying things I don’t believe as part of the presentation in this course.”
Google’s attorneys repeatedly objected to the doc being utilized in courtroom, arguing that it wasn’t a enterprise report. Mehta agreed to listen to Roszak’s testimony concerning the exhibit in a sealed session.
A Google spokesman mentioned the statements don’t mirror the corporate’s opinion and famous that they had been drafted for a public talking class through which the directions had been to say one thing hyperbolic and attention-grabbing. The witness testified he didn’t consider the statements to be true, the spokesman mentioned.
“He was cosplaying Gordon Gekko,” Google lawyer Edward Bennett mentioned, referring to the notorious character from the 1987 movie Wall Street and likening it to a “skit” Roszak was requested to provide in a coaching session.
The struggle over the doc spilled over extra broadly within the case when the Justice Department took down all of the reveals it had beforehand made public.
Mehta dominated that the exhibit can be admitted, expressing frustration that Google had put him “in a pickle” because it insisted the testimony that will have offered context be held in closed session.
“This doesn’t contain anything confidential,” he mentioned. “I understand it’s somewhat embarrassing for the witness.”
“Here you have somebody who is the director of finance, who albeit in a training session made the decision to make a mock presentation,” Mehta mentioned. “These are not statements that would fall outside his wheelhouse.”
The subsequent day, Google’s attorneys sought to redact a part of the doc, however Mehta denied their request and mentioned he would unseal the portion of Roszak’s testimony associated to it.
Source web site: www.hindustantimes.com
