A landmark ruling on Monday declared that Alphabet’s Google illegally monopolizes web search and included a rebuke for the tech giant for obscuring potential evidence in the case, along with a warning to other companies about safeguarding data. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., criticized Google for allegedly failing to preserve internal chats and abusing protections for legal communications, though he declined to formally sanction the company.
The U.S. Justice Department had urged Mehta to punish Google for what it described as the “systematic destruction” of employee messages and “flagrant misuse” of the attorney-client privilege. However, Mehta found it unnecessary to rule on Google’s evidence handling to determine if the company violated antitrust law.
“Still, the court is taken aback by the lengths to which Google goes to avoid creating a paper trail for regulators and litigants,” Mehta wrote, noting that Google “trained its employees, rather effectively, not to create ‘bad’ evidence.”
Google and the Justice Department declined to comment on Mehta’s decision not to sanction Google over its evidence safeguards. Google, which has denied violating antitrust law, announced plans to appeal the court’s ruling and denied mishandling evidence.
Google previously had a policy of automatically deleting employees’ chat messages after 24 hours unless the person clicked a “history on” button to preserve them. Last year, Google changed the policy to better safeguard chats. Mehta also criticized the company’s “communicate with care” initiative, which involved Google employees adding lawyers to messages and marking them “attorney/client privileged.”
The fight over Google’s chat records has impacted other cases challenging the company’s business practices. Last year, a federal judge in California ruled that Google “willfully” failed to keep relevant chat evidence in a lawsuit filed by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games. Epic prevailed in that trial, which accused Google of overly controlling the Android app market.
Later this month, a federal judge in Virginia will hear arguments about evidence destruction in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google over its digital advertising practices. A non-jury trial is scheduled for next month.
Mehta emphasized that his decision not to sanction Google was not an exoneration. “Any company that puts the onus on its employees to identify and preserve relevant evidence does so at its own peril,” Mehta wrote. “Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky in the next one.”
