IANAL but it seems that it would succeed in requiring an additional layer of argumentation that “area” is code for “market”. My rough sense is that nothing is trivial in cases like this, but how difficult would it be to argue this?
It’s not that complex. Judges aren’t computers, and the words of a law are not an imperative program that judges “execute” against the evidence and arguments. The attempted ruse isn’t that clever, and it’s more likely to piss a judge off than wow him or her.
Using area still murk the waters. Some people may be legitimately meaning something other than market when they say area. So it's not really possible to say that every market occurrence can be replaced with market in the internal emails. This is not the definitions section of a contract, it's a guideline. So, it's probably still worth doing. If they don't, then people using market have 100% chance of meaning market, whereas after the guideline, usage of area has less than 100% chance of meaning market and being accepted like so.
q: why do you ask people to use the word area instead of market?
a: Because imprecise language clouds thinking and makes things less intelligible, and Google is a company that makes its money from intelligence. People have been incorrectly referring to areas as markets, in order to better communicate we laid down guidelines. We often lay down guidelines about corporate communications to heighten their efficiency, as do other companies
on edit: I'm not saying that this is true, but one can easily make an argument as to why you use area instead of market in communication and ask your workers to do likewise. I would think the courts would require more evidence than that.
You're suggesting that an answer which explicitly makes "area" a synonym for "market" is a defense against the suggestion that using "area" is an attempt to obfuscate that they're really referring to "market". That, uh, doesn't add up.
Establishing the use of the word "market" in an email is not the end goal. The end goal is establishing the violation of US antitrust laws by, e.g. buying out the competition and taking actions that unreasonably restrict trade (generally in your competitors' goods/services).
But there are two ways to hold a company to account. One is a civil mechanism, producing civil penalties and consent decrees (or damages, maybe?). The other is by the prosecution of a criminal offence. Enforcement via the latter is harder to do. It requires showing the actions were done intentionally, just like every criminal prosecution. It also has a very high standard of proof. Using the word "crushing the competition" in the context of buying competitors or engineering them out of the first page of search results is evidence of that. Google doesn't want exposure to criminal liability. It is undoubtedly harder to prove they did this stuff intentionally if they deliberately refrain from talking about it and do it in winks and nods.
I don't know what you're referring to by "try to be clever or cute" but using these language guidelines to decode discovered materials and show a criminal intent to do things that constitute criminal violations of antitrust law is not cute, and neither is relying on the absence of directly incriminating language to absolve yourself.
