By Michael Liedtke, Technology Writer
SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) --The U.S. government's attempt to prove Google has been using its dominance of online search to stifle competition and innovation at the expense of consumers and advertisers won't go to trial for nearly three years.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Friday set a tentative trial date of Sept. 12, 2023 for the landmark case that the Justice Department filed two months ago.
"This dispels the notion that we would go to trial quickly," said Mehta during a conference call with government and Google lawyers to go over the ground rules for exchanging confidential documents and deposing top Google executives.
He estimated that once the trial begins it will last about 5 1/2 weeks in his Washington, D.C., courtroom.
The prolonged wait for the trial underscores the complexity of a case seeking to defuse the power of a startup that sprouted from Silicon Valley garage in 1998 and evolved into a $1 trillion company whose services are regularly used by billions of people around the world.
Between now and the trial's opening, reams of documents peering into Google's inner workings and its deals with Apple and other well-known companies are expected to be examined. Many of the documents will be kept confidential, while others may be publicly released and peel back the curtain on the way Google operates.
Mehta is also allowing sworn depositions of eight Google executives for up to 14 hours each. The identities of those Google executives haven't been determined yet. Google's current CEO, Sundar Pichai, as well as two former CEOs, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, are among the leading candidates to be deposed about the company's strategy and dealings.
Google has fiercely denied the government's allegations that it has illegally struck a series of deals to thwart competition in the search market to help give it a stranglehold on a digital advertising market that has brought in more than $100 billion in revenue to the company during the first nine months of this year alone.
The company's staunch insistence that it has done nothing wrong makes a pre-trial settlement seem unlikely.
With the trial still years away, Google will conceivably become an even more imposing force before the federal government and the attorneys general in dozens of states get their day in court. Another antitrust case filed Thursday is seeking to preempt Google's dominance in other still-emerging fields of technology such as voice-activated devices in the home and internet-connected cars. That case is likely to be combined with the Justice Department's.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults โ two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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