TECH NEWS – This has led to a tense relationship between the Department of Justice (from now on we’ll use the acronym DOJ) and the Alphabet subsidiary…

The ground is getting hot under Google’s feet for creating an illegal monopoly in the digital advertising space, in violation of laws requiring free and fair competition. While the company is under investigation, the situation has been further complicated by allegations that Google employees deliberately hid some messages from investigators, i.e. destroyed potential evidence, in order to avoid more legal problems for Google! The Verge reported that one of the trials in the case took place in the US state of Virginia, where DOJ lawyers claimed that Google employees hid messages that were confidential and off the record!

This has further complicated the proceedings, and if the second antitrust judge decides that this evidence was concealed by Google employees, it will put the company in an even worse position, and an adverse inference order could be issued because the destroyed evidence could set the case back, and the company could find itself in a much worse position by changing the narrative, thus putting the DOJ in an effective winning position!

Chris LaSala, Google’s former head of sell-side advertising, came to Google’s defense on Friday, saying that his company’s chat messages had history turned off by default and that employees had to manually change the settings individually. Many employees admitted at the time that they had not made the necessary changes, and while the conversations were mostly casual, some messages contained important business discussions. Some of the incidents were highlighted in court when the government ordered LaSala to instruct employees to turn off chat history when exchanging sensitive information.

Google could face legal repercussions if the court finds that the destruction of messages was intentional… and it also shows that there is increasing pressure on larger tech companies to pay more attention to laws and regulations to make sure there are no legal complications.

Source: WCCFTech, The Verge