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Google has denied U.S. government claims it deliberately destroyed evidence needed in antitrust lawsuits and defended its use of “history off chat” for many internal communications. , the message will be automatically deleted within 24 hours.
The U.S. government and 21 states last month asked a court to sanction Google for allegedly destroying evidence using chat auto-delete features, halting the practice of auto-deleting in chats subject to litigation holds. and accused Google of falsely notifying the government. Google on Friday opposed a sanctions complaint it filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Google said it is taking a “phased approach” to saving chats. “In the event of a lawsuit, Google will instruct employees on legal hold not to use messaging apps such as Google Chat to discuss litigation matters. settings[履歴をオン]tells you to switch to We will file a lawsuit to ensure that such messages are preserved,” her Google filing reads.
US: Google removed chat by default
Google’s submission was filed in response to the United States’ claim that Google should have disabled auto-delete by default instead of “waiving” it.[ing] It puts the burden on individual custodians to hold potentially relevant chats. “
“Google deliberately failed to store relevant evidence. The daily destruction of relevant evidence has led Google to set a company-wide default to delete history-off chat messages every 24 hours, and then When I chose to keep my admin auto-delete settings, I couldn’t avoid a litigation hold,” an antitrust attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice told the court on Feb. 23.
A US and state lawsuit against Google was filed in October 2020, alleging that Google illegally maintains a monopoly in the search and search advertising market through anti-competitive and exclusive practices. The U.S. has said that Google has a “obligation to store employee chat messages” after 2019, when it became clear that the lawsuit was imminent.
Google: US asks too much
Google said government plaintiffs “argued that federal regulations specifically mandate that Google apply mandatory history.” all caretaker of all Chats created while the custodian is on legal hold, regardless of whether the message may be litigation related. “
However, Google noted that federal regulations require only “reasonable measures to preserve” the information. “Google’s significant preservation efforts here, and in particular its methodology regarding history-off chats, are a ‘reasonable measure’ under the rules,” Google argued.
Google said that U.S. and state attorneys general “have not been denied access to material information necessary to prosecute these cases, and have provided evidence that Google intentionally destroyed such evidence.” Google also claimed that the government knew “that there is a subset of chats that are not automatically retained” before the lawsuit began, and that it filed the challenge too late.
“Plaintiffs’ allegations have been barred from the outset because they have been aware of Google’s approach to chat for years, but did not challenge it until after their discovery. These tactics are permissible. It shouldn’t,” Google said in court.
United States: Google Falsely Claims It Has Paused Automatic Deletions
Google disclosed in its November 2019 ESI (electronically stored information) survey that “the difference between ‘off the record’ and other chats is what we wanted to pursue from the beginning of the DOJ investigation.” It shows that it was clear to those who were For example, ESI survey responses noted that chat “messages are typically retained for 30 days if marked off-the-record, and may be retained longer if off-the-record messages are on legal hold.” is specified.
Google also says, “It’s no secret how Google’s Chat product works.” Because it’s a public product and his website for Google Chat describes the history off feature.
A Justice Department motion last month said things would have happened very differently. He said yes, and continued:
All this time, Google has misrepresented to the US that Google is “suspending automatic deletion” and “put on legal hold.” In fact, during the US investigation and discovery phase of this lawsuit, Google repeatedly misrepresented its document retention policy, giving the false impression that the company stores all secret chats. During the investigation, Google not only explicitly claimed that the auto-deletion was stopped by a legal hold, but also consistently failed to disclose its 24-hour auto-deletion policy to both the United States and the courts. Instead, Google has reaffirmed that it stores and retrieves all potentially relevant written communications at all times.
History Off Chat is also at issue in another lawsuit filed by Epic Games, which alleges that Google has illegally monopolized the market for mobile app distribution and mobile app payment processing on Android. Epic filed a petition in October to sanction Google for allegedly destroying evidence.
