Judge Slams Google’s Legal Chief Over Missing Chats

Despite court orders to preserve evidence, Alphabet Inc.’s chief legal officer has been rebuked by a federal judge for allegations that Google deliberately destroyed sensitive internal communications that are pertinent to two ongoing antitrust lawsuits.

U.S. District Judge James Donato, who is presiding over a trial in San Francisco over Epic Games Inc.’s allegations of anti-competitive behavior in the Google Play app store, ordered Kent Walker, the company’s longtime lead attorney, to appear in court. to answer questions about the technology giant’s accounting practices.

Thursday’s hearing, held in the absence of a jury, came after several Google executives, including Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, admitted on the witness stand that they mistakenly marked the emails as attorney-client privilege so they could not be forwarded. or have programmed their Google Chat settings so that their messages disappear after 24 hours. They did so despite a court order requiring the company to retain certain employee messages and other internal documents, Epic claims.

Donato was quickly angered by Walker’s answers.

“You’re tap dancing here,” Donato said, implying that Walker dodged Epic’s lawyer’s questions about the company’s chat retention protocol.

“Why didn’t you just save conversations and enable history like you do emails?” Donato asked, adding that other company executives had already proven that the company had the ability to do so. He also asked Walker why the company relied on the employee’s discretion to record the chats.

Google has also been accused in other lawsuits of using improper tactics to avoid sharing data when evidence is gathered at trial. The US Justice Department has sought penalties against Google in a separate antitrust case involving the company’s search business, alleging the company encouraged employees to discuss sensitive topics in chats that automatically delete after 24 hours.

But no US judge has gone so far as to subpoena the company’s top lawyer to explain the internal data retention protocol followed during legal battles and regulatory scrutiny.

Walker, who joined Google in 2006, has quietly become one of Google’s most powerful officials in recent years at a time when Google and other major tech companies have come under unprecedented regulatory scrutiny.

Walker was educated at Harvard University and Stanford Law School and spent his early career as an attorney at the Department of Justice. He later worked at eBay Inc., Netscape Communications Corp. and AOL before joining Google.

During Walker’s long tenure at the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm, he has seen the company’s legal challenges grow in the US and Europe, from copyright and data protection issues to antitrust investigations and AI ethics.