What is trying to hide big technology?

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Tim Higgins, The Wall Street Journal 5 min Read May 17, 2025, 06:24 pm ist Big Tech acts as if it has something to hide. Photo: Emil Lendof/WSJ, Getty Images Summary Amazon, Apple, Google is all accused of abusing legal privileges to deprive their power. Big technology acts as if it has something to hide. And it does not help to argue technical Titans in the courts of law or public opinion against the idea that they have become too great for their own good. If there is anything, they help dig their own graves. Amazon.com is the youngest facing potential sanctions on the allegations, and it has improperly withheld tens of thousands of business records – including some unfolding for founder Jeff Bezos – in the defense against an action by the Federal Trade Commission. At Google, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the company did not give evidence in a case brought by epic games, and its behavior became a yoke as the Justice Department wanted to break up the search giant after winning two landmark antitrust cases. Another federal judge recently referred the behavior of Apple to the Justice Department, partly because of alleged attempts to hide documents for legal inquiry. Such debt gives new credibility to complaints by competitors and regulators that these businesses often tend in eclipse as one of the tactics used to protect their kingdoms. In addition, their actions in court seem to confirm what their many critics claim: that great technology should relocate. Apple, Google and Amazon have all argued in their individual legal battles that they did nothing wrong. In Amazon’s case, a judge has not even decided on the matter yet, and the accusation of the FTC is on the heels of Apple’s rebuke. Legal staff car documents for the 2021 hearing in Epic Games’ case against Apple on the App Store. Each company is accused of being too aggressive in holding back internal documents under special legal status – known as a privilege – that should be transferred to the government or advocates who were sued on behalf of Epic. The video game enterprise led separate perennial battles against Apple and Google about his desire to download his app on smartphones outside the Tech Giants’ 30% commission. “The advocates are the people who are supposed to say no when something crosses a line, and they don’t even fail that duty – they actively encourage these things,” says John Newman, a legal professor at the University of Miami and a former FTC deputy director. “It seems to be just a culture of what – if they were not our Crown Jewel Tech businesses, created or at least contributed – I think we would call a culture of lawlessness.” Perhaps it is not surprising that the companies cannot help themselves to push the limits. After all, this is what made them as successful as disruptors turned conquerors. In their minds, it is the underdogs, whether they face the rise of AI, China or the next big thing that peers outside the horizon. In addition, the advocates of these companies fight to protect the geese that lay their clients’ golden eggs. They try to protect managers who live in an always-on-digital chat and e-mail culture to injure themselves-and the companies. Missive can become a unique, or too honest, missive, the next smoking rifle of the plaintiff. Or maybe it’s just sloppiness in a complicated legal process that could include millions of records handed by third-party contractors. That doesn’t make it right after all. Megan Gray raises the abuse of legal privilege to ‘rich privilege’. She is an antitrust advocate who once worked for the FTC and Google’s rival Duckduckgo. She suggests that some advocates may not feel vulnerable to the overrun, especially if the consequences of imprisonment do not match. “Attorneys, especially in these large businesses, earn so much money-I mean it is only astonishing-and if you make as much money, the worst possible consequences are that you are not withdrawn,” she said. In Apple’s case, US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wrote late last month that about half of the tens of thousands of documents the company claimed were later downgraded amid extra investigation. She concluded that this resulted in a delay for legal action and ‘that delay equal gains’ for the iPhone manufacturer. (Apple does not agree and intends to appeal.) In a recent filing, the FTC made its case to seek sanctions against Amazon for what it called ‘systematic abuse of privilege’. It noted that the company withdrew 92% of its claims to some investigation and produced about 70,000 documents that it had previously held back. (A spokeswoman for the company replied: “We are working hard to ensure that the FTC has all the documents well before the trial.” He added that Amazon is currently handling how to surrender involuntarily presented information in another case. FTC said.) Millions of clients have subconsciously enrolled for its prime service. Documents pointing out to the FTC that it is improperly withheld contains notes of a December 2020 meeting between managers reminiscent of when clients had to call earlier to cancel subscriptions. With reference to the practice, one of the drivers remembered how Bezos was “earlier the head of the Dark Arts officer.” Boxes with documents went to Federal Court in Alexandria, Va. During Epic’s trial against Google at the end of 2023, the search giant was brought to the task by US district judge James Donato, not only too many improper privileges, but also taken steps not to retain internal chat messages that should have been saved. In a rare move, the top lawyer of Alphabet, Kent Walker, a long -standing corporate lawyer and former assistant American attorney, was called to testify. Walker said to the judge outside the presence of the jury that he believes the company is taking its obligations to seriously preserve and deliver information in the litigation. The judge did not agree, and later called his old law school classmate’s testimony elusive and “substantially contrary to other witnesses”. “All of this offers the most serious and disturbing evidence I have seen on the bank in my decade regarding a party that deliberately suppresses relevant evidence in litigation,” the judge said. “I’ve never seen anything so bad.” To take such heat, I can only imagine how embarrassing those messages must have been. Write to Tim Higgins at [email protected], catch all the corporate news and updates on live mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates and live business news. More Topics #Technology Mint Specials