小练习 9.15

Just a few years ago, a crackdown in the US to curb the might of America's tech giants seemed at hand.

就在几年前，美国还在为遏制美国科技巨头的势头而对其进行打压。

Bosses from Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook had been hauled before Congress and President Joe Biden was putting in place a slew of officials known for their tough-on-tech views.

苹果、亚马逊、谷歌和脸书的老板们已经被传唤至国会，同时，乔·拜登总统正在任命一系列对科技采取强硬态度的官员。

But efforts by Congress to write new rules tackling issues such as privacy and disinformation are all but dead, and in the courts tech firms have won a series of high-profile victories in cases challenging their responsibility for content on their platforms and their right to buy up other firms.

On Tuesday, the next legal battle will begin - a high-stakes trial that pits the government against Google.

然而国会针对隐私和虚假信息等行为撰写解决新规的尝试已经基本宣告失败。在法庭中，科技公司面对挑战其平台内容责任和收购其他公司权利的指控，已经高调获得了一系列胜利。

周二，下一场法律之战将会开始——一场政府与Google针锋相对的高风险审讯。

The company is accused of unfairly cementing its position as the world's go-to search engine by paying billions of dollars to phone-makers like Apple and web browsers like Mozilla to be installed as the default option.

Prosecutors contend the deals gave Google - which handles some 90% of global search queries - such a data advantage that it blocked rivals from emerging and violated US competition laws.

谷歌公司被指控通过向苹果等手机制造商和Mozilla等网页浏览器开发者贿赂成百亿美元的方式使受贿方将谷歌设置成默认浏览器，从而不正当巩固其作为世界最大搜索引擎的地位。

检察官表明主张，这类交易让谷歌——它承担了国际上大约90%的网络搜索业务——具有庞大的数据优势，以至于阻碍了其竞争对手的发展。而该现象违反了美国竞争法。

The suit, filed in the waning days of the Trump administration in 2020, is seen as a landmark case - the most serious challenge to the way the tech industry operates in decades and a key test of whether the US government can prevail in its fight to rein in the industry.

这纸诉讼起草于特朗普势力逐渐衰落的2020年。它被视为一场标杆案件——这是近几十年来对科技公司运作方式最严重的挑战，也是对美国政府是否能控制该产业的关键考验。

Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google's parent company, Alphabet, is expected to testify over the 10-week trial, as are executives from Apple. 

"It's the anti-trust monopolisation trial of a generation," says Bill Baer, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former government attorney working on competition issues, known as anti-trust in the US.

Google母公司Alphabet的首席执行官Sundar Pichai以及苹果公司的执行官都被要求在为时10周的审理当中提供证言。

“这是一个时代的反垄断审判。”布鲁金斯学会会员、前美国反垄断（即竞争问题）检察官Bill Baer说道。

Some analysts say the government has a strong case.

They noted similarities with the 1998 suit against Microsoft, which the courts later found maintained its monopoly over operating systems through illegal, anti-competitive tactics, like pre-installing Internet Explorer.

If the government wins this case, it could mean Google is no longer automatically installed as a search engine - and perhaps other, more significant changes.

部分分析家称政府碰上了“硬骨头”。

他们指出了本诉讼与1998年微软一案的相似性。其中，微软通过非法反竞争手段在操作系统中实施垄断，具体方式包括预装IE浏览器。

如果政府胜诉，那么Google便不再能被自动安装为搜索引擎——同时也有可能导致更近一步的变化。