Federal judge vows to investigate Google for intentionally destroying chats
By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
Judge James Donato is overseeing Epic v. Google, a case that could determine the future of the Android app store — but testimony in this case may have more repercussions for Google, too.
On Friday, Judge Donato vowed to investigate Google for intentionally and systematically suppressing evidence, calling the company’s conduct “a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice.” We were there in the courtroom for his explanation.
“I am going to get to the bottom of who is responsible,” he said, adding he would pursue these issues “on my own, outside of this trial.”
Testimony in the Epic v. Google trial — and in a parallel DOJ antitrust suit against Google in Washington, DC — revealed that Google automatically deleted chat messages between employees and that employees all the way up to CEO Sundar Pichai intentionally used that to make certain conversations disappear. Pichai, and many other employees, also testified they did not change the auto-delete setting even after they were made aware of their legal obligation to preserve evidence.
And Pichai, among other employees, admitted that they marked documents as legally privileged just to keep them out of other people’s hands.
On November 14th, Pichai told the court that he relied on his legal and compliance teams to instruct him properly, particularly Alphabet chief legal officer Kent Walker — and so Judge Donato hauled Walker into court two days later.
But the judge was not satisfied with Walker’s testimony, either, accusing him of “tap-dancing around.”
Walker said he never attempted to audit
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