Google loses battle to control how DOJ antitrust trial docs are shared online

Enlarge / Ian Madrigal, dressed as the Monopoly Man, outside federal court on the first day of the Justice Department’s antitrust trial against Google. (credit: Win McNamee / Staff | Getty Images North America)

The third week of the Department of Justice’s antitrust trial probing Google’s search business kicked off this week with a small win for public access to the trial’s secretive proceedings. Yesterday, judge Amit Mehta ruled that at the end of each day, trial documents can be posted online, Bloomberg reported, promising public access “as soon” as possible to trial documents—including likely one email that Google considered “embarrassing.”

Mehta’s ruling ended a week of confusion and public outcry after the DOJ hastily removed public exhibits from a website sharing updates from the trial.

Much of the trial is already blocked from public view—with documents heavily redacted and hours of testimony sealed. Nearly two-thirds of Google’s responses and motions in the case have been sealed, The New York Times estimated.