From Ars Technica, September 29:
Google exec said users get hooked on search engine like “cigarettes or drugs.”
The US Department of Justice has finally posted what Judge Amit Mehta described at the Google search antitrust trial as an "embarrassing" exhibit that Google tried to hide from the public.
The document in question contains meeting notes that Google’s vice president for finance, Michael Roszak, "created for a course on communications," Bloomberg reported. In his notes, Roszak wrote that Google's search advertising "is one of the world's greatest business models ever created" with economics that only certain "illicit businesses" selling "cigarettes or drugs" "could rival."....
....MUCH MORE
You sir, are an idiot. Why would you write something like that down?
It's like Congressman John Jenrette saying, when offered $100,000 in the Abscam bribery scandal: "I have larceny in my blood — I'd take it in a goddamn minute."
The Arab sheikh making the offer was an FBI agent and the offer was part of a sting and the G-Men were recording him.
Why would you say something like that?
I was looking at Jenrette because we had a couple posts on his second wife Rita. When his first wife, Sally, sued him for divorce she said she had documented his affairs with 23 other women. When Jenrette was informed of Sally's grounds for the action Jenrette said:
“Whew! Is that all she knew about?”
The South Carolina papers said he was known for his constituent outreach work.
And Rita? She went on to become Her Serene Highness the Principessa Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi.
After the Prince died we caught up with Rita putting the family home on the market:
December 2021
Attention Art Fans: Large Caravaggio For Sale, Asking $552 Million
Villa included....
January 2022
UPDATE: "Villa Aurora: Rome property fails to sell for €471m at auction"
And, as such thing go when money is involved, it got nasty:
May 2023
"Playboy princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi loses $500M home in bitter royal feud: ‘I’m palace-less and penniless’"
But back to Google. The guy also wrote:
....Beyond likening Google's search advertising business to illicit drug markets, Roszak's notes also said that because users got hooked on Google's search engine, Google was able to "mostly ignore the demand side" of "fundamental laws of economics" and "only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats, and sales." This was likely the bit that actually interested the DOJ.
"We could essentially tear the economics textbook in half," Roszak's notes said.....
Oooh, that's going to leave a mark, antitrust-wise .
