Antitrust judge 'in a pickle' over Google's privacy demands

Leading news sites have taken the decision to publish the redacted documents while the judge takes the weekend to decide what he will allow to be public

The Department of Justice “caved” when Google challenged it to remove public access to emails, charts and internal presentations at its landmark antitrust suit, it was claimed yesterday.

Bloomberg said the decision made the “trial much more difficult for the public to follow” and was markedly different to “the similarly monumental antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s”.

As I reported yesterday, the DoJ published bombshell exhibits used in court on its website but removed them when Google argued employees’ email addresses or phone numbers were revealed.

“Just so we understand what’s at stake here, every document they push into evidence they post on their website, and it gets picked up far and wide,” Google lawyer John Schmidtlein told Judge Amit Mehta. “This isn’t a business record, and it’s totally irrelevant to these proceedings.”

The judge said he was surprised to discover the DoJ was posting but acknowledged that “once it’s admitted into evidence, in fairness, it is a public do…