Security News > 2023 > February > Google destroyed evidence for antitrust battle, Feds complain

The US Department of Justice asked the judge hearing its antitrust case against Google to sanction the search advertising giant for destruction of evidence.

The case has since progressed into the discovery phase and now the DoJ contends that Google has ignored its responsibility to preserve evidence relevant to the case.

"Despite Google's representations that it had implemented a legal hold and suspended auto-deletion of relevant information, Google knowingly destroyed documents relevant to this litigation and has done so for years," the government claims in a memo [PDF] released on Thursday supporting its motion to sanction Google.

"While Google could have set the default 'history on' for all employees subject to a legal hold, Google did not do so."

The government memo points to a similar evidentiary hearing [PDF] held in a competition lawsuit involving Epic Games and other plaintiffs in which Google acknowledged that "It has not preserved all chats for employees under a litigation hold in any case over the past five years."

The government's motion [PDF] asks Judge Amit Mehta to: hold that Google violated evidence preservation rules; order a hearing to assess appropriate penalties; and to order Google to provide details about its practice of allowing employees to send chat messages with the history feature turned off.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/02/24/feds_google_antitrust_communication/