This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
A federal trial is beginning this week in Amazon's hometown to decide whether the world's largest online retailer tricked its customers into Joining Prime and then made it difficult to cancel the membership. Prime provides subscribers with perks that include faster shipping, video streaming, and discounts at whole Foods for a fee of one hundred and thirty nine dollars annually.
It's a key and growing part of Amazon's business, with more than two hundred million members, bringing in more than twelve billion dollars in net revenue in the last quarter, a twelve percent increase from the same period last year. But the Federal Trade Commission says Amazon misled customers into signing up for Prime and then made it very difficult to cancel. Joining me is Matthew Shettenhelm Blue Umberg Intelligence litigation and government analyst. Matt explain why the FTC is suing Amazon.
Yeah, so this is a lawsuit, but that the FTC filed two years ago alleging that Amazon Prime cancelation and
its subscription process doesn't comply with federal law. There's a twenty ten federal law called the Restoring Online Shoppers Confidence Act that addresses those membership programs that you can kind of sign up for and they can automatically renew, and there are some terms that the federal law requires that the company be very clear about what those terms are, that the customer make informed consent to those terms, and that any ability to cancel that sign up is simple,
uses simple mechanisms. And the FTC says that Amazon falls short on all three of those claims, and it's trying to consumer redress and impose civil penalties on the company.
Let's start with the FTC's contention that Amazon makes it difficult for consumers to purchase an item without also subscribing to Prime, so it sort of tricks them into subscribing for Prime.
Yeah, that's right. This goes back to when Lena Kon was chair of the FTC, and there's a big focus on sort of dark patterns and pushing, nudging consumers to do things that maybe are against their will. And that's the allegation here that as consumers went to maybe buy a product on Amazon, Amazon sort of forced them into this process of also signing up for Prime basically tricked them, is the allegation, and so Amazon says, no, our process
was very clear. They tried to move motion to dismiss on this and tried to move for summary judgment, but the judge wouldn't allow it. He said, look, reasonable people could disagree about this. This need to go to a jury. So on that issue and all the others, the jury is about to take that question up.
The FTC also claims that getting out of a Prime subscription was too complicated. It required the customer to affirm their desire to cancel membership on three pages, and internally Amazon employees call the process the iliad.
Yeah, so the law requires a simple mechanism to cancel these sign ups, and yes, I think it's it's going to be harmful evidence that the FTC will present to the jury that there were some comments made by Amazon employees that describe this process as very difficult, and as you said, even characterizing it as the iliad, I think in a reference to the odyssey and how difficult this
can be to get through for consumers. Now, Amazon pushes back on that and says, no, actually, you know, we have data showing that people figure it out, always going to be a couple of exceptions, and these stray comments by employees don't really characterize how the process works. So again here the judge looked at both sides and said, you know what, I can't decide this is a fair question to toss to a jury, and so that's going to be presented to jurors this week and next.
I have to say that a lot of companies seem to make it difficult to get out of subscriptions. I mean, sometimes you sign up online, but you have to call in order to get out of the subscription. Does Amazon really stand out from these other companies that seem to do the same thing.
Yeah, I mean I think that's a point that Amazon's going to push that. Look, there isn't a lot of clarity about what is a simple cancelation method, and the industry follows pretty similar practices on this sort of thing. This is pretty industry standard, and to me, like one point that Amazon's going to raise, the FTC tried to do a rule mad on this statute to add more clarity to it, and that was over the past couple
of years. And when they did that, when they first announced that rulemaking, they said this federal law that requires a simple cancelation process. It isn't very clear. So the industry, I think, is struggling with Okay, what exactly is too much? And Amazon had to make a calculation on that point. It had to look to other industry practices, and Amazon says, look what we have in place. You know, maybe it's not the simplest that you could possibly imagine, but that's
not what the law requires. It's pretty simple. You do have to click through a couple things, but that's sufficient to qualify as simple when you consider the industry standard practice in Amazon's view, And did FTC.
Give Amazon a chance to correct this before they brought suit.
My understanding is that Amazon's already changed its processes in material respects, and so I think at this point the fight is mostly about going after the company for practices in the past that have changed already and potentially seeking what could be significant financial penalties against the company for its past practices. So I don't see it as much about injunctive relief or trying to change Amazon's practices going forward, as much it is trying to penalize Amazon allegedly for
not following the law since around twenty fifteen. And going forward.
I wondered because I thought, you know, the jurors will probably go online and try to cancel and see what happens. But you're saying, that's not the cancelation process that's there. Now.
My understanding is this is focused on a previous version of the cancelation process, and I suspect the judge will discourage the jurors from investigating on their own.
I know the judge will, but you know, jurors sometimes he right listen to those things. And the judge has already ruled against Amazon on a few issues pre try well, including limiting the legal defense that Amazon can raise at trial.
Yeah, that's right. You know, Amazon has repeatedly had a difficult time with the judge, Judge John Chune. You know, he refused to dismiss the case in May of twenty twenty four when Amazon asked for that. He refused to grant an early appeal of the case in July of this year, and then last week he granted summary judgment in parts to the Federal Trade Commission to sort of narrow a couple of the issues that would go to
the jury. He refused to grant summary judgment for Amazon, but He sort of very narrowly said, you know a couple of these issues. Look, there's no way Amazon you're going to win on this point or that point. Still, I think the core of question is going to these jurors, but he did narrow it a little bit. He also said that a couple Amazon officers who worked on these processes could be held personally liable if the jury concludes that Amazon violated the law knowingly.
Yeah, and he ruled that the FTC doesn't have to prove every single example of Amazon's sign up and cancellation procedures are deceptive and can focus on a representative sample.
Yeah. I think that's right. So sort of narrowed the issues a little bit, narrowed the evidence that will go before the jury. As I said, Amazon's really had a tough time with Judge John June here. And I think the question is if Amazon lets the jury rule on liability on whether Amazon violated the law or not, and whether it did it knowingly, it goes back to the judge then to set the financial penalties. And when Amazon's had such a difficult time with this judge, is that
really something that it's going to want to do. That's going to be a real consideration for the company as it thinks about potentially settling this case.
Yeah, So in July, the judge admonished Amazon for withholding seventy thousand documents, saying the conduct was tantamount to bad faith. So it doesn't appear that Amazon has earned the judges trust.
Right, It's been a tough go throughout this case. And you know, I thought Amazon might have a decent chance at getting some of this case narrowed on its motion to dismiss that a request for early appeal on this stuff might have a small chance. But time after time, this judge has let this case advance, as you said, criticize the company for some of its practices as it's
defended this. So I'm not sure that Amazon's going to feel very comfortable letting the judge decide how much it should pay to resolve this.
Let's talk about the exposure of the company, because each violation of that Restore Online Shopper's Confidence Act allows for penalties of more than fifty three thousand dollars per violation. So how much money are we talking about it?
All?
Right? So you get to absurd math really quickly when you deal with numbers like that. If you're talking about tens of million millions of Amazon Prime subscribers, and I think Amazon's expert was talking somewhere in the ballpark of thirty to forty million Amazon users, and you multiply that times fifty thousand, it breaks my calculator. And so the judge ultimately using that number would have to settle on a civil penalty that is meaningful to the company, but
not a violation of due process, not so unreasonable. There's also a push from the FTC for consumer redress, not just civil penalties, but the FDC's expert says that when you look at how much consumers paid that they shouldn't have here, he calculates the damages close to one billion dollars just for that, So one billion for consumer redress or nearly that, and then civil penalties that, as we said, could easily reach absurd billions of dollars, but likely would
get into the billion dollar range as well. And so even with the company, you know, with the resources like Amazon, it's really hard for any judgment to be disruptive to a company like Amazon that has you know, annual profits in the you know, sixty seventy billion dollar range. It's hard to be material, but this might might get their
attention when numbers like that are in place. So I think when you add all of that up, there's going to be considerable pressure for the company to settle this before the judge gets to decide on what is the reasonable penalty.
But that's a really difficult calculation for Amazon to make, isn't it So what they'll watch the jurors through the trial and see whether any of them are reacting favorably to their arguments. I mean, it's really hard to read a jury.
It's very difficult to predict exactly when these companies will will settle in trial. I've seen cases settle at the beginning of trial. I've seen cases settle at the very end, right before we're about to get a verdict. I think, you know, it's reasonable to see how it's going, you know,
get a read on the on the jurors. It's possible they take their chances because one of the things that Amazon has going for it is that for the judge to impose civil penalties here, it's not enough that Amazon violated this federal law we've talked about, but also the FDC has to prove that Amazon did so knowingly, and so I think Amazon's going to have an argument that, Okay, look, even if we did technically not give consumers a simple method to cancel, if if this number of clicks is
a couple too many, did we really know that knowingly given the limited FTC guidance that's out there, Given that the FTC itself has said that this isn't simple, So there's actually a chance for the company to be found liable in the sense that it violated the law, but not subject to these serious financial penalties. And so if I'm Amazon, that's the kind of thing I'd be watching out for. But I think, you know, you might want
to think about settling. If I'm Amazon, you might want to think about settling, you know, before the returns its verdict, because you have the prospects to win with the jurors, and so that should help your negotiation posture with the FDC in reaching sort of a reasonable settlement. If you lose with the jurors, that argument falls away. You've already lost, and it's all a question of how bad it's going to be.
Are there internal documents that talk about that?
Ili I like process, I mean, I think there is some internal evidence that won't look great here, and you think about how is a reasonable jur going to think about, you know, Amazon employees talking about their process like you know, some of these allegations claim it might not be a great look to a jur and a jur looking at a company with significant resources like Amazon and thinking maybe about how much they've spent on their own Amazon account, and you know, you can see why why a company
could be nervous. Anytime a case like this goes to a jury, it's going to be unpredictable. It's going to be risky for a company. So you know a lot of sure to settle to just make the thing go away for a sum that won't be material for a company like Amazon.
Like other companies, Amazon has been attempting to forge friendlier ties with President Trump. Can you tell us a little about that?
Yeah, I mean we're seeing that across a number of companies right now. There's often a question, you know, where companies can can fight aggressively against this administration or they can choose to not rock the boat. And I don't know how much this case will will fit into that paradigm. Is a case that came during the Biden administration and
it was continued under the Trump administration. But you know, I think that that probably does play into part of the calculation as well, like how aggressive do we really want to be here in fighting and a settlement that that isn't material might be better to make the whole thing go away.
The FTC has another antitrust case against Amazon that's going to trial in twenty twenty seven.
Yes, that's right. So my colleague Jenrie covers the anti trust side for us on that, and so yeah, that's in many ways a much more significant threat for the company than this which is really focused on, you know, sort of a discrete issue, as we said, a past practice. But Amazon faces you know, much more significant threats on the anti trust front. And I think so that's a good point as well. You look at this stuff in the big picture and do you want to really be
resisting this administration? Maybe the anti trust case plays into that calculation.
Coming up next on the Bloomberg Lawn Show, I'll continue this conversation with Matthew Shettenhelm of Bloomberg Intelligence. Jimmy Kimmel is returning to the air tonight, but not everywhere. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. Jimmy Kimmel Live will return to the air tonight, ending a suspension Walt Disney imposed following controversial remarks the late host made about
the shooting death of conservative activists Charlie Kirk. Disney's decision to suspend the show followed pressure from both the federal government and independent operators of ABC stations. Brendan Carr, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, criticized Kimmel's remarks on a podcast and suggested the company could lose its broadcast licenses.
But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action frankly on Kimmel, or you know, there's gonna be additional work for the FCC ahead.
But two Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Ran Paul of Kentucky attacked the FCC chairman's actions, with Cruz accusing Carr of mafioso tactics.
Look look, I like Brendan Carr. He's a good guy. He's the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with it. But what he said there is dangerous as hell. He says, we can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way. Yeah, And I got to say, that's right out of good fellows. That that that that that's right out of a mafioso coming into a bar, going nice bar you have here, It'd be a shame of something happened to it.
So, Matt Kimmel's coming back on the air tonight, but some stations are not carrying the show.
Right.
So the FCC rules say that local stations have the right to preempt national network content. And what we're seeing now is that two of those bigger local station owners, next Star and Sinclair, are exercising their right to preempt that network programming. And so I think this is, you know, directly tied to FCC Chair Brendan Carr's push the other
day the podcast. He told those companies, Look, you can do this if you don't like, you don't believe that Jimmy Kimmel's content is in the public interest, you, as a local station owner, have this right to preempt it.
All these local stations negotiate contracts with the networks that protect this right, and so this is just an exercise under those FCC rules, But maybe because the FCC chairman told them to do this directly, and they have an incentive to follow what the FCC chairman asked them to do.
The stations that aren't taking the show tonight, are they ones that are looking to.
Merge Next Star. Yes. Nextstar has recently announced a six billion dollar deal to acquire Tegna, another owner of TV stations, and it's really important that the FCC be supportive of that for two reasons. One, the FCC has to approve the transaction because it involves swapping licenses from Tegna to Nextstar. The FCC has to sign off on that. And even more importantly, there's an FCC rule right now that says no broadcast station can reach more than thirty nine percent
of US households. This deal would let Nextstar reach something like seventy eighty percent of US households, So they need the SCC to scrap that rule first. And so there's a real incentive when the FCC chairman asks you to do something, or at least strongly encourages you to do something when you need all these steps for a major deal to happen, you have a strong incentive to go
along with that. Sinclair doesn't have a pending deal in the same at least not of the same scale right now, but it also is a big supporter of this deregulation that the FCC is working on, the thirty nine percent cap and a couple other rules that the sc is looking at. Easy.
Why do you think Disney brought Kimmel back.
Well, there was you know, significant pressure, I think public pressure on the company, raising concerns about whether the company was folding to government pressure here. When it was initially announced, they were deliberately I think cautious about not saying how long the suspension of the programming would last. And so I think it's possible that this is a response to that public pressure to bring him back pretty quickly.
There was a lot of negative reaction from conservatives about taking Kimmel off the YEIR and the threat to free speech. But is car still standing by his words.
Yeah, I think Brendan Carr is saying, look, I wasn't threatening the companies on this. I I was pointing out how the law works. But yeah, it was sort of surprising to see Senator Ted Cruz in particular, haul out Brendan Carr for those comments. And that's when you saw Brendan Carr sort of pulling back a little bit and maybe not using quite the same tone, but still saying, look, here's how FCC processes work. I was just talking about that.
It seems like a little bit of a softening in the tone at least from Brendon Carr after a pretty important Senator, Ted Cruz, who runs the Commerce Committee, the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the SEC, spoke out pretty strongly, and so I think it's possible that his sort of pullback, at least a softening on his comments was in response to that always good.
To talk to you, Matt, thanks so much. That's Matthew Schettenheim, Bloomberg Intelligence litigation and government analyst. Coming up next. Google is facing another breakup possibility in court. I'm June Grosso
and this is Bloomberg. The Justice Department has opened its offensive in court to force a breakup of Google before the junior federal judge who's already ruled the search giant illegally monopolized advertising technology markets, Judge Leoni Brinkhema is hearing testimony over two weeks from website publishers, advertisers, tech experts, and Google's own employees about whether the company should be forced to divest a key piece of its business the
Advertise against Change Addicts Joining me is Bloomberg Intelligence Senior litigation analyst Jenniferree. Jen, can you tell us about the judge's decision that Google illegally monopolized ad tech markets?
Well, the viability decision has already been made that at least for some tools that Google has in what's called the ad tech stack, it has a monopoly position and it has undertaken illegal conduct to maintain those monopolies. You know, under the US law, it isn't illegal to have a monopoly, but once you have one, you can't do things that
exclude competitions to stay in that monopoly position. There were three products that Google has that the DOJ alleged to be monopolized, and one of those was called a publisher ad server, one was called an ad exchange, and one worked a series of tools on the advertiser side. So if you think about you know, advertisers and digital advertisers and publishers coming together to place an advertisement on a website.
The publishers have a tool, the advertisers have a tool, and then there's an exchange in between them to conduct an auction for an advertiser to actually bid on space and win that space and pay for that space and
run their ad. The court decided on the advertiser side, Google didn't have a monopoly and that the Department of Justice didn't define the market in a proper way that sort of outlined a specific competitive product and failing to properly identify the exact market they're talking about this monopolized You kind of fail across the board. So that dropped out. But what stayed in the case and where the judge did find liability was with the public publisher ad server
and the AD Exchange. So the publisher ad server is a tool that the publishers that have space on their websites that they're selling to an advertiser. It's where they can manage that inventory and where they can then access the ad Exchange, and the AD Exchange is where the auction would take place.
This gets very technical. Can you tell us the main thing that the judge found Google did that was anti competitive?
You know, the judge found a number of things, but the main conduct of Google that the judge said was anti competitive and harm the competitive process was tying. In antitrust, tying is when a company has a product that's a must have product or where they have market power and consumers want to use that product, but that seller of that product has a second product that's not as desirable, and they leverage the must have products to force customers
to buy the second product. So in this case, there was this very valuable inventory that Google had in its own ad exchange. This inventory was really valuable because advertisers were on that exchange through the ad products that Google has, because it also places ads on Google Search, and as
we know, Google Search is a monopoly product. It's been seen that by a court most searches are done by Google, and so advertisers want to be able to place ads when a search is conducted and on that search page. So Google has this great inventory of advertiser demand, and that advertiser demand feeds into its ad exchange. And what Google said is, hey, publishers, if you want access to that demand, you have to use our publisher ad server.
You can't use any other rival publisher ad server. And in that way Google tide it's AD exchange to its publisher ad server and so what does that do to you? And it blocks all the other competitors out for these products, and it keeps this entire transaction within Google's ads tech stack. And Google's now extracting fees all along the way because at each step of the process there's some feed that's
taken by the host of these ad tech tools. When in an auction is one and an added paid for, Google's taking fees for that, and so it manipulated this process by controlling all of these pieces. And that's essentially what the court found. So the primary finding was this tying of the publisher ad server of Google. It's called DSP, that's what Google calls it to its AD exchange, which is called add X.
This trial is going to determine the remedy and the Justice Department is asking that Google be required to sell off some of its tech.
Yes, that's right. So the judge is looking about what do we do about this monopolistic conduct and what the DOJ has proposed its own set of remedies, and Google has proposed its set of remedies, and the judge is now going to have to decide, and the DOJ basically says, look, the only way to fix this is to force Google to sell the ad exchange that's the add X product to a buyer that's subject to the DOJ approval. Because this is so technical and there's so many things Google
could do to manipulate the process. If all we do is impose theavioral remedies and say Google stop doing what's illegal, there's so many other sneaky ways Google could come in there, manipulate the process and pervert the process to benefit itself. And the only way to really prevent that, and a really easy and streamlined and kind of clear concise way of doing that is to force Google to sell the ad exchange. And maybe also by the way DSP it's
Publisher ad Server. That's kind of a contingent remedy. The Dot's proposing sort of a strange phased divestiture of that product where it first basically Google has to just make it a little bit more interoperable, provide access to APIs so publishers could migrate their products, their inventory off of that publisher to another one, and make some of this code available to be run by a neutral organization sort of opening it up a little bit, but not fully
selling it. But if that all doesn't work to fix competition, then fully divest it. So it's kind of like they're saying, divest the ad exchange and sort of open up the publisher ad server and maybe divest added need it.
I mean what would that do to Google? How much of a loss would that be for Google?
I mean billions of dollars of ad revenue. Advertising is the main money making products of a lot of websites. Search is free, and YouTube is free, and Google Maps is free, and a lot of these products are free because they make their money via this ad revenue, and they make a lot of money not just placing ads on a search page when somebody does search, but also via this ad tech stack and via the placement of that between other digital publishers and advertisers.
And what is Google proposing instead?
So what Google's proposing obviously is to not have to sell anything and just what's called a behavioral remedy. We're
going to change the way we conduct our business. So they're saying that they would remove that tie, you know, they would allow publishers to have access of this great and unique demand that comes from the ad network products that fits in the AD exchange to make bids, will let you have access that at least demand for open web display ads that's different from an AD that's a search AD will allow you to use other publisher ad networks and still have access to that demand. So we'll
just remove that tie. And also they had had imposed some pricing rules on publishers, and they had forced them to set price floors that were unified. They'd say, well, we'll allow publishers to do what they want to. We'll open up some of our rules. If they want to set different price floors for different bidders rather than a unified price floor for everyone, we'll let them do that.
And they also had some technical things they'd implemented that advantaged Google's own tools, gave them special priorities, or gave them the ability to sort of see bids and adjust and match bids so that they could win. They say, you know, we'll not use that stuff. We've already fased some of that out. Google says, and we'll phase all the rest of it out. We'll get rid of all these technical things that we've done in this process that advantage us and advantage our tools. So we'll make the
whole process more neutral. Generally, will make it a lot easier. All of these products, will make them interoperable, will make it easier for publishers to use Google tools on the ad network side in conjunction with other ad tet providers, some other ad exchange of another company, or some other publisher ad server from some other company. So publishers now can sort of mix and match rather than using the whole Google stack.
During a May hearing, did the judge hint that she was considering seriously the government's argument to force a sale.
She has to explore all of this, you know, she has to dig into all of this, and she did suggest in a hearing that you know, she's considering that. But bear in mind, in the Google Search case, which is much farther along than this, where we already have the remedies that have been imposed on Google for now pending appeal, that judge also very seriously appeared to consider the prospect of forcing Google to divest Chrome, but didn't
ultimately impose that remedy. You know, the judge has to explore all of the possibilities in order to come up with those possibilities that she thinks are going to be the best in this case to basically stop the anti competitive conduct and restore healthy competition in the market.
What kind of testimony will there be a trial. She's heard a lot already from the first trial.
Right now, A lot of this is going to be very technical. So I think what's already started are some of the entities that have been harmed by Google's conducts. For instance, rival publisher ADS or Verse that can't get business because they don't have access to this desirable demand on ADEK talking about how it's hurt them and supporting the idea that the only thing that would help would
be divestitures. So right now, the DOJ putting on witnesses talking about how they've been hurt by the conduct, why they think just behavioral remedies won't work, and why they think divestitures will be needed. Google will very likely put on some very technical people that will talk about how difficult and complicated it would be to force the structural change to force a divestiture, and the fact that it could have all sorts of bad unanticipated consequences.
You mentioned Judge Meta backed off on breaking up Google. It's a difficult decision for a judge if she did that, would it be presidential?
You know, it really would June because first, there isn't this precedent, right because the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission hasn't really brought a lot of monopoly lawsuits in the last thirty years or so forty years. The
last really big one was Microsoft. That was by the Department of Justice, and the Department did initially seek a divestiture and they weren't able to win that in court ultimately after there was an appeal, And it would be presidential because where we've seen divestitures has really been in
a different context. It's been where a merger took place that in and of itself was illegal, that it was illegal for company A to buy Company B, and now they have to divest company B. It's very different situation than when the initial in this case, Google actually bought the publisher ad server. It was a company called double Click, and they bought the ad exchange. But the judge said that acquisition was not anti competitive. So it's not a
situation where you have an anti competitive acquisition. So to require a divestiture for bad conduct would be fairly presidential today. And this judge has a little more leeway than Judge Meta had in the Google Search case, because in that case, Judge Meta was really bound by the precedent from the Microsoft decision, which was an appellate court within his circuit.
This case is not in that circuit. It's in the Eastern District of Virginia, and those cases can be persuasive for this judge but not necessarily binding, so she has
a little more leeway. I think Judge Meta felt very much constricted by the language in Microsoft which cautioned against using a divestiture remedy in the kind of case that Judge Meta was overseeing where it wasn't extraordinarily clear that Google's monopoly and search wouldn't have occurred if Google hadn't engaged in the conduct that was alleged in that case,
which was exclusionary dealing. You have to have a strong causation standard, according to Microsoft case, in order to use divestiture as a remedy, and in that case, Judgment it didn't feel he had that strong causation standard, and because of the Microsoft president, it felt that he couldn't impose the divestiture in that case. This judge isn't necessarily bound by that.
Is it just me? Or are there a lot of trials antitrust trials lately? It seems like, you know, there's one after the other.
No, there are so many. And you know, it's funny because a lot of people sort of credit a Biden administration for all of the monopoly cases government ones, enforcement ones that are out there now. But these investigations and a couple of the cases actually started during President Trump's first term. So there was a lawsuit STC versus Meta
over its acquisitions of Facebook and Instagram. We're still waiting for a liability decision on that case, but that was brought by the Trump administration and then basically acuted during the Biden administration. And you also have this Google Search case, and you have a case against Amazon, and you have
a case by the USDJ by Apple. But one of the other things it's done is all of these actions by the government have empowered private entities as well, So you have follow on class actions that are the consumers or in this case, let's say, the publishers and the Google ad Tech case, that have been harmed by the conduct. So when you get a liability decision that it says publishers have been harmed or didn't get let's say the
best prices. Well, they're going to turn around and file a class action where they're probably looking for a monetary
relief more so than injunctive release by the government. But you know, those then can go on for years and our additional burden on these companies, and you have that in almost every case with Google, with ad Tech, with Google, with Apple, with respect to the DJ's allegations against Apple, against Amazon, with respect to the SEC's allegations against Amazon, and then also with respect to Google's play Store and Apple's App Store by Epic Games not liking the fact
that there are closed ecosystems for downloading apps on either Android or iOS. And those cases have been ongoing for a long time as well.
And of course, whatever happens, Google will appeal. Thanks so much, Jen. That's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Litigation Analyst, Jenniferree, And that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcasts. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, Slash podcast, Slash Law, and remember to tune into the Bloomberg Law Show every
weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg