In the US courts system, juries are used to determine questions of fact, but if the facts are not in question, a judge can apply the law and there's no need for a jury.

Agreeing that there's no question of facts speeds the whole process along quite a bit. There's no need for witness testimony, it can all be managed in hearings and with breifings.

It's possible to avoid a jury trial in a civil case by removing from dispute the issues which would give the other side the right to demand a jury trial.

How is that beneficial to society?

Each individual legal rule isn’t formulated according to a free-ranging consideration of what’s “beneficial to society.” It would be impossible to administer such a system of rules based on ad hoc policy considerations.

The rule here, the Seventh Amendment, confers a right to a jury trial when one would have been required under English common law at the time the seventh amendment was written. Roughly speaking, in the English system, cases involving monetary damages were handled in courts of law with juries. Cases that involved injunctive relief (orders to do or not do something) were handled in courts of equity with decisions made by judges.

> How is that beneficial to society?

How is it beneficial to not require extra public burden to complete cases when the issues justifying that burden are resolved without trial?

Or how is it beneficial that issues get resolved without trial?

Because I think both have clear benefits in general.

The dispute is resolved.

but it's not resolved, it is "repaired" by a cheque for an amount that was determined ahead of time by google, and the jury not consulted at all?

It's only resolved if the court agrees that the amount tendered is the limit of the monetary judgement it would legally be possible for the government to secure at trial, and that such a tender does remove the issue from the case (both of which are disputed points) in which case the damages issues would be resolved and removed from the case, and the rest of the case would go forward, but as a bench trial, not a jury trial.

It wasn't an amount determined by Google. It was the entire amount claimed by DoJ, tripled, and with interest.

What's happening is similar to "no contest".

Where Google accepts paying the damages but does not plead or admit guilt.

(You can do the same thing if you get a speeding ticket. And since you accept the consequences, no reason to go to trial.)

By paying the maximum possible amount of damages for the case that the plaintiff reasonably alleges, apparently.

This is a civil case. The jury wouldn't be deciding on guilt.

Dolla dolla bills, y’all.

Basically anything is legally possible with enough of them, or just claiming to have enough of them.

Ole Donny T. wasn’t really exaggerating when he said that he could shoot a man dead in broad daylight on Fifth Ave. and get away with it.

I'd like to add the perspective here that only the US "makes routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases" [Wikipedia], so most of the world believes that justice can take place (at least in some circumstances) without a jury