Free Republic

This week, in Commonwealth v. Kurtz, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the use of a “reverse keyword” request that led police from a pool of Google searches to a suspect in a 2018 kidnapping and rape, concluding that the data fell under the long‑standing “third‑party doctrine.” The opinion announcing the judgment said that when people type searches into Google without extra privacy tools, they effectively share those queries with the company and assume the risk that Google may hand them to police.​ The ruling means that, under both the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment and Pennsylvania’s own search‑and‑seizure protections, those basic...

San Francisco jury finds that Google ‘maintained monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive conduct’.. Google lost an antitrust case over the market power of its app store on Monday, a blow to the search giant as it faces other legal challenges to its search dominance and ad tech business.. Videogame maker Epic Games sued the search giant in 2020, alleging it used its dominant position to squeeze excess profits from app developers. The San Francisco jury reached a unanimous verdict after deliberating for less than four hours. The loss comes as Google battles more antitrust challenges, including a landmark trial...