The Justice Department has revoked access to publicly released trial documents in the United States v. Google case due to a dispute over how they were made available online, Bloomberg reporter Leah Nylen reported. Nylen reported in court that Judge Amit Mehta will make a decision on future online access to exhibits in the morning.
The BigTechOnTrial newsletter reports more details of the exchange, which apparently took place as the Justice Department was speaking with Google about whether the exhibit could be submitted as evidence. Google's lawyers apparently brought up the fact that the Justice Department had been posting documents online, a fact that Mehta said he was unaware of. According to BigTechOnTrial, Mehta said he did not necessarily object to posting the documents, and that the Justice Department offered to notify Google in advance of the documents it planned to post, potentially avoiding future conflicts.
Google declined to comment on the dispute, and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The page where the trial evidence was previously stored is now offline, although a snapshot from last week is still available through the Internet Archive. As Nylen pointed out, Google also has a page about trial information, with slides of its own opening statements in court.
As public records, court documents are often posted online during trials, which in some cases leads to unintended disclosures. For example, incomplete redactions in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) recent court hearing with Microsoft leaked details, while a trove of documents apparently uploaded in error earlier this week revealed internal plans for a new Xbox console.
The United States v. Google case may be one of the most influential antitrust trials of this century, and the information disclosure part of the trial has been a tug-of-war. Google, Apple and other companies have argued that the trial has the potential to reveal sensitive financial information as the Justice Department proves that Google illegally monopolized the search engine business. Unlike several other high-profile similar cases, the trial was not broadcast remotely and only part of the first day was audio broadcast, which was approved at the last minute.
Now, we'll have to wait and see how much more information will be released as the 10-week trial progresses.