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Bloomberg
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 court filing. 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
towards 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.