Google Violates Court Order to Preserve Records of Employee Chats for Antitrust Litigations

Alphabet Inc.'s Google has been accused of violating a court order after failing to save records of employee chats in antitrust litigation for its Google Play app store policies. These chats are typically deleted after 24 hours.

Violating Court Order

United States District Judge James Donato in San Francisco said in a ruling that Google deleted chats from almost 360 employees that are supposed to be used as potential evidence to the complex cases brought again the company by Epic Games Inc. and a coalition of state attorneys general.

"In effect, Google adopted a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy for chat preservation, at the expense of its preservation duties," Donato stated. Based on a report from Bloomberg, Google was required by the Court to preserve chats in antitrust litigation over its Google Play app store policies.

As of the moment, there are still no final sanctions written as the Court would like to see the state of play of the evidence of fact discovery. By that time, Google will be in the position to tell the Court what might be the reason for not preserving chat records.

Because of this, the federal judge said that he would hold further proceedings to come up with an appropriate non-monetary penalty against the company regarding this situation. Additionally, he argues that Goole must also reimburse plaintiffs for their attorneys' fees.

Google's Response

These findings come after the Justice Department sought sanctions on the company for its antitrust suit in federal court in Washington DC. According to a spokesperson from Google, the company's teams have "conscientiously" worked to Epic and the state AG's discover requests for years already.

CNBC reported that Google already produced over three million documents including thousands of chat employees. "We'll continue to show the court how choice, security, and openness are built into Android and Google Play," the spokesperson added.

As Epic and other plaintiffs collected evidence in 2021, both parties pointed out missing chats and conversations from employees, some of which were allegedly newly produced. This shows Google's intention to destroy sensitive communication regarding matters for these cases.

The filling added that Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and other company executives often moved sensitive conversations from history-on rooms to history-off chats. According to Pichai in an October 2021 chat, the CEO interjected to change the setting of the group to history off.

As per Court House News, Donato said that lost chats just prove how challenging this case is. He said that once all evidence is gathered before November 6 trial, he said on his ruling that "plaintiffs will be better positioned to tell the court what might have been lost in the chat communications."