Apple and other technology companies said confidential material they provided for the U.S. government’s antitrust probe of Alphabet Inc.’s Google should not be shared with the search giant’s in-house lawyers because secrets they include are too sensitive.
David McLaughlin for Bloomberg News:
In a filing Friday in federal court in Washington, Apple said it gave the U.S. Justice Department “competitively sensitive” documents and that allowing lawyers inside Google to see the information would result in “material harm” to Apple. A similar joint filing was made by Amazon.com Inc., AT&T Inc., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Comcast Corp., Sonos Inc., Duck Duck Go Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: In its rush to excrete Android, Google copied Oracle’s Java line for line. No wonder Oracle is concerned.
Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to make its search engine the default browser option on iPhones and other products, according to analyst estimates. In its court filing, the iPhone maker said the documents at issue relate to its negotiations with Google and other search engines and Apple’s internal deliberations about those discussions.
“Disclosure of this information to Google would directly implicate future business dealings between Apple and Google, provide Google with a substantial advantage over Apple in negotiations, and potentially disadvantage competitor search engines that negotiate with Apple and other software providers,” it said.
MacDailyNews Take: Nobody, including Apple, trusts Google with trade secrets. Gee, wonder why?
