DOJ Seeks Sanctions Over Deleted Google Texts in Antitrust Suit

Alphabet Inc.’s Google urged employees to discuss sensitive topics via chats that would be automatically deleted after 24 hours and the company should face penalties for failing to preserve records needed for an antitrust suit, Justice Department lawyers told a federal court.

Google assured the government’s lawyers that it was maintaining all records starting in November 2019, according to a Feb. 10 court filing that was unsealed Thursday. In practice, however, the government said company employees used “off-the-record” chats to discuss business and the lawsuit in Google Hangouts, a chat platform that lets users determine whether records are maintained or deleted.

“For years, Google employees intentionally steered conversations away from email and toward chats, sometimes explicitly requesting that the history remain off,” Justice Department lawyers said in the filing. “By intentionally destroying employee chats and making repeated misleading disclosures to the United States, Google violated” federal rules on litigation.

The Justice Department asked US District Judge Amit Mehta to hold an evidentiary hearing on Google’s chat deletion and impose sanctions on the company at a trial scheduled for this fall.

“We strongly refute the DOJ’s claims,” Google spokesperson Julie Tarallo McAlister said in an emailed statement. “Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation. In fact, we have produced over 4 million documents in this case alone, and millions more to regulators around the world.”

Google has been accused of similar misconduct in another federal antitrust case related to its dominance over Android apps downloaded through the Google Play Store.

US District Judge James Donato, who is overseeing the antitrust clash in San Francisco, has yet to rule on a motion for sanctions sought by plaintiffs including state attorneys general and closely held Epic Games Inc. Donato said at a hearing earlier this year that he is considering giving the jury an instruction that could adversely impact Google in the trial set for November.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is US v. Google, 20-cv-3010, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

To contact the reporter on this story:
Leah Nylen in Washington at lnylen2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman

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