Google wants judge, not jury, decide upcoming antitrust case in Virginia

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press

Google is asking that a federal judge, rather than a jury, decide whether it violated U.S. antitrust laws by building a monopoly on the technology that powers online advertising. To bolster its case, the tech giant said Thursday in a court filing it wrote a multimillion-dollar check to the U.S. government that Google says moots the government’s best argument for demanding a jury trial. The antitrust case currently set to go before a jury in Virginia in September is one of two major lawsuits the Justice Department has brought against Google. The Virginia case focuses on advertising technology, an ongoing case in the District of Columbia focuses on Google’s dominance as a search engine.