The Leadership Letter

Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.

Ruth Porat and Jamie Rosenberg Discuss Samsung Search Revenue-Share Deal

A two-line executive sign-off on a Samsung search agreement captures, in near-real time, the commercial machinery at the heart of the U.S. government's landmark antitrust case against Google.

From: Ruth Porat To: Jamie Rosenberg CC: Sundar [Pichai], Matthew Bye, Philipp Schindler, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Jim Kolotouros, Cristina Bita Subject: Re: samsung search agreement status

"thanks for the update and good luck getting to final!"

— Ruth Porat

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From: Jamie Rosenberg (Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 1:32 PM)

ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGED (with Matthew for legal advice)

Ruth, Sundar, Hiroshi asked that we provide you with a quick summary of where we are with the Samsung search revenue share deal, in case you need it as context for earnings.

Status & Timeline: - We have verbally agreed to terms with Samsung (consistent with the terms in the deck). - We expect to send them a draft contract next week, and hope to have counter-signature by end of August. - We lost some time when the Samsung deal team pivoted its priority to completing a license agreement with us for our search backfill feed for the Bixby Voice Assistant, which launched on Tuesday. Back on track now.

Financials: - The revenue share is [confidential] after deducting [confidential] for expenses (for both new devices and the installed base). - We eliminated the [confidential] several months ago because Samsung could not commit to Chrome in the hot seat, and/or dedicating the -1 screen to the Google Feed. - Projected payments are [confidential] over the next [confidential], which is an increase of [confidential] over their current revenue share rate.

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Court Exhibit
United States v. Google LLC (Search)
1:20-cv-03010 (DCD), Trial Ex. UPX1108 — DOJ public archive
July 21, 2017
Public domain
View the primary source →