Courts

Justice Department Sues Huge Search Engine For Destroying Evidence During Antitrust Suit

This is not what GDPR meant by the right to be forgotten.

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Google LogoWe all know what Google is good for — finding stuff! It may also be good at preventing its competitors from fairly competing in its markets. The good news is that we don’t have to figure that part out on our own. The Department of Justice is currently in the middle of proving their theory of the case. Since Google is, you know… Google, the DOJ is likely up against some brilliant legal minds. They may also be up against some paper shredders. From Reuters:

U.S. Justice Department lawyers say that Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) destroyed internal corporate communications and have asked a federal judge to sanction the company as part of the government’s antitrust case over its search business.

The DOJ asserted in a court filing unsealed in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Thursday that Google failed to timely suspend a policy allowing the automatic, permanent deletion of employees’ chat logs.

It is hard to prove your case when the evidence just conveniently goes missing!

The government said Google “falsely” told the U.S. in 2019 that it had suspended “auto-deletion” and was preserving chat communications as it was required to do under a federal court rule governing electronically stored information.

If this were a mom and pop shop that threw out a tax form, maybe, but Google should have known what they were doing here. They’re the one everyone else goes to when they need to figure out what to do for crying out loud. Either that or YouTube… which is also Google. Point stands.

“Google’s daily destruction of written records prejudiced the United States by depriving it of a rich source of candid discussions between Google’s executives, including likely trial witnesses,” DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer wrote in the filing.

The dream would be for Google to magic up an old server that still has all the logs the DOJ needs. In lieu of there being an OSGoogle out there, the DOJ is requesting the court to hold a hearing and consider sanctioning Google. In the meantime, I’d recommend that the DOJ keep up their diligent search for the logs — maybe go past page 5 of the Google results? That far back is basically the dark web.

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U.S. Justice Dept Accuses Google Of Evidence Destruction In Antitrust Case [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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