I can't speak to this particular situation, but your argument has "if you'll had nothing to hide then you would have nothing to fear" vibes.
You don't seem to account for the possibility of a situation where an entity is not guilty, but gets in trouble anyway because of someone's words.
No that's not it at all.
If they are concerned about monopoly allegations, they should give anti-monopolistic-practices training to staff.
Instead they are giving anti-monopolistic-language training to staff.
You may not believe it, but no financial firm I've ever worked for gave me training on "don't use insider training language". All the training was emphatically that they did not want us to do it, it would destroy the company and destroy our lives explicitly. It was drilled into our heads with live talks, videos, handbooks, attestations, etc.
This GOOG training seems to be like "how to pass a sobriety test" rather than "don't drunk drive".
Insider trading and anti-trust violations aren't comparable. It's pretty easy to tell someone not to trade on insider knowledge, and it's pretty easy for an employee with a little experience to tell when they are doing so. How do you tell employees not to engage in monopolistic behavior? Be less competitive? Don't push out products that too many people will like? I would say the basic issue is that anti-trust laws are entirely subjective, enforcement is usually politically motivated. Given this subjectivity, it makes more sense to care about appearances rather than some ill-defined "substance".
Anti trust isn't that opaque, it just hasn't been actively prosecuted for the last few decades.
There's a ton of stuff that has been allowed to happen via consolidation, merger, or pure homegrown that simply hasn't been prosecuted because recent administrations had an alternate theory that monopolies are OK if it benefits consumers via lower prices. Tech gives out a lot of stuff free or where its cost is hard to directly measure.
Tech also enjoyed bipartisan support for the last 20 years or so, but that has completely flipped over the last 4 years or so. We will likely see a lot of this stuff is no longer ignored.
In saying that different administration priorities and changes in political support for tech drive anti-trust actions you are making my point (which I maybe didn't make clear). That kind of arbitrariness means firm's counsel can't say "don't do X" like you want them to. Because "X" shifts. It also means counsel sensibly focuses on appearances, since appearances can be the main driver of political support.
> There's a ton of stuff that has been allowed to happen via consolidation, merger, or pure homegrown that simply hasn't been prosecuted because recent administrations had an alternate theory that monopolies are OK if it benefits consumers via lower prices.
That's not incompatible with violations in other circumstances. For example, Google releases Android for free, resulting in low prices for mobile operating systems. Competing operating systems may be put out of business, but customers benefit from lower prices and this should be fine if anyone can still choose to use a competing OS -- or fork of Android -- should they prefer it.
Whereas, Google uses tying to its dominant services to ensure that Google Play is the only viable app store on Android, then takes a 30% cut. High margins don't result in lower prices and neither does excluding competitors who might take a smaller cut, so they should be slapped down for this.
Google adds remote attestation and encourages third parties to rely on it even though it makes third party apps dependent on Google's version of the system, creating a barrier to entry for forks or competitors. This kind of thing should be prohibited, because otherwise people are not choosing Google's offering because it provides the best value for money, they're choosing it because Google manufactured a way to shut out competitors who might do better.
The theory isn't the problem. Taking a competitor's market share because customers choose your product for having a better price is not bad. The bad is making it harder for customers to choose competing alternatives they might actually prefer.
The problem is the application. The company comes up with some claim that their anti-competitive moat is there to benefit customers by providing security etc. and get away with it even though it doesn't really provide security or there are viable alternatives that provide security without restricting competition.
Again, this isn't a comment on the merits of Google's case in particular. I'm not supporting what they're alleged to have done here, nor claiming they've been angels all around. What I'm saying is "they told people to not use risky language" isn't necessarily a sign that they were guilty or doing something illegal, just like it isn't with everyday folks. Because prudent people will care about language either way, because they know it can get them in trouble regardless.
With that said...
> You may not believe it, but no financial firm I've ever worked for gave me training on "don't use insider training language"
These are apples and oranges. You may not believe it either, but I don't think Google tells anyone "don't use insider trading language" either. That's the apples-to-apples comparison.
AFAIK being a monopoly is a corporate civil matter, not a (strictly personal?) criminal one like insider trading. Expecting people to treat them the same way and claiming they're guilty if they don't makes no sense.
There is very little non-executive level employees can do to engage or not engage in monopolistic practices. All the decisions that lead to that are generally taken way above so such training would be pretty useless. Insider trading is very different in that regard because it’s something individuals can engage in and (usually) not the outcome of corporate strategy.
