Google’s practice of deleting employee messages leads judge to suggest sanctions in Epic trial

Ben Schoon | Mar 30 2023 - 1:52 pm PT

Google’s ongoing trial with Epic Games has seen the company in hot water lately due to an internal practice of deleting employee conversations after a certain period of time. Now, a federal judge in the trial believes that Google should see face sanctions.

CNBC reports that a federal judge says that Google has “adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for keeping messages, at the expense of its preservation duties.” This is because Google has, for some time now, left the decision to keep chat history up to employees. By default, messages delete every 24 hours.

Google’s practice of deleting messages has been questioned before, including in a case with the US Department of Justice, which expected Google to change the practice as far back as 2019 when it “reasonably anticipated litigation.” Google also told the DOJ that it had suspended auto-deletion, but the DOJ alleges that was a lie and that deletion only stopped recently.

In the Epic case, Epic Games alleges that Google failed to keep chat history that it “should have preserved.” The judge has made it clear that the case “will not be decided on the basis of lost Chat communications.” As for what sanctions Google should face as a result of these actions, the judge has yet to decide. However, the judge has already ordered Google to cover the attorney fees for Epic as regards this particular issue.

In response, Google said:

Our teams have conscientiously worked, for years, to respond to Epic and the state AGs’ discovery requests and we have produced over three million documents, including thousands of chats. We’ll continue to show the court how choice, security, and openness are built into Android and Google Play.