NY Times reports on the lawsuit; and publishes the Gabbard complaint online.
Thinking at Crabgrass is pro-Tulsi. With this concrete court action, Google personnel cannot play dumb to the claim they have an ill-met responsibility of fair treatment, necessarily imposed because of their near monopoly control of Internet search. Search providers should not be politically biased, regardless of market share, but when batting .900, things are different than if Bing was number one, by miles, and Google had intentionally or negligently infringed advertising rights of the Gabbard campaign. The degree of interference, the impact of error (whatever its cause), would not be as serious as when a near-monopoly power disadvantages a candidate in a place where search reliability and impartiality has been touted.
Recall how grossly MSNBC [owned by Comcast, whose lobbying arm did the initial Biden fundraiser kickoff], acted last cycle; how that outlet froze Bernie out? Yes, coarse and inexcusable, but within free speech rights of an outlet struggling for market share while without any dominant presence in the market of TV news and ideas.
Compare Google, the eight hundred pound gorilla of the Internet. "Anywhere it wants to," unless the rule of law says no.
