Antitrust judge claims Google flouted an order to save evidence

Google Inc., the company behind Google Play, violated a court order requiring it to save records of employee chats during a recent antitrust dispute over its policies regarding its app store, a federal judge has ruled.

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In a ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge James Donato in San Francisco stated that Google gave nearly 360 employees "carte blanche" not to preserve communications as potential evidence that may be essential to the company's complicated antitrust battle with Epic Games Inc. and a coalition of state attorneys general. At the expense of its preservation obligations, he claimed, Google effectively adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for chat preservation.

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Donato stated that more procedures would be held to determine if Google should be subject to a non-monetary sanction for its actions and whether it should be required to pay the legal costs of its critics.

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In response to Epic and the state AGs' discovery demands, "Our staff have diligently worked for years to answer to those requests, and we have produced over three million documents, including thousands of chats," a Google representative stated. The spokesperson stated, "We'll keep demonstrating to the court how choice, security, and openness are ingrained in Android and Google Play."

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The case number is 21-md-02981, and it is brought by the Northern District of California in the US District Court (San Francisco).