State plaintiffs allege Google intentionally destroyed hundreds of thousands of chat messages to keep away from discovery in ongoing advert tech litigation.
In accordance with a movement filed on January 6, 2025 within the Japanese District of Texas, a number of U.S. states are in search of sanctions towards Google for allegedly destroying hundreds of thousands of inner chat messages that ought to have been preserved for ongoing antitrust litigation.
The states accuse Google of implementing a deliberate coverage between 2008 and 2023 that made “historical past off” the default setting for worker chat messages, inflicting them to be mechanically deleted after 24 hours. In accordance with the submitting, Google’s Chief Authorized Officer Kent Walker explicitly advised workers in writing that this coverage was designed to make sure most chats wouldn’t be out there to adversaries in future litigation.
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The movement reveals that of Google’s 202 custodians concerned within the case, 61 weren’t positioned beneath litigation holds till 2022 or later – greater than three years after Texas issued its first Civil Investigative Demand in September 2019, and two years after Google represented it had carried out correct preservation measures.
Court docket paperwork point out that evaluation of accessible chat logs from December 2022 to February 2023 confirmed that Google CEO Sundar Pichai had 96% of his chat messages mechanically deleted throughout this era. Extrapolating from the out there knowledge, the states estimate Google’s insurance policies resulted within the deletion of roughly 20,000 messages per custodian yearly, totaling between 2.8 and 4 million deleted chat messages per yr throughout all custodians within the litigation.
The states argue that Google’s actions warrant extreme sanctions beneath Federal Rule of Civil Process 37(e), requesting that the court docket instruct the jury that Google had an obligation to protect the chats, deliberately deleted hundreds of thousands of messages, and that jurors should presume the deleted communications contained info unfavorable to Google.
In accordance with launched paperwork, Google modified its chat retention insurance policies in February 2023, across the time one other federal court docket criticized the corporate for comparable conduct. The brand new coverage modified the default setting to protect chat historical past and eliminated the flexibility for workers beneath litigation holds to disable message retention.
The movement cites a number of cases the place Google workers acknowledged utilizing “historical past off” chats particularly to keep away from having communications preserved for litigation. In a single cited alternate from August 2022, an worker famous that chat historical past being preserved “ceaselessly” was “in all probability not an awesome thought for a public firm until you need to find yourself getting deposed alot.”
The submitting represents the newest improvement in a multi-state antitrust lawsuit initially filed in 2020, specializing in Google’s conduct in digital promoting markets. The case, led by the state of Texas, alleges that Google illegally monopolized varied elements of the advert tech ecosystem.
Google faces comparable allegations about chat message destruction in different ongoing antitrust litigation. The movement references a California federal court docket’s characterization of Google’s practices as “a ‘do not ask, do not inform’ coverage for Chat preservation” in a separate case involving the Google Play Retailer.
The states argue that Google’s systematic destruction of chat messages has prejudiced their capability to show their case, because the communications possible contained candid discussions about Google’s enterprise practices that aren’t captured in preserved emails or different paperwork.
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