Antitrust: Google accused of Concealing Documents
The legal war between antitrust authorities and Google is in full swing. The US Department of Justice revealed on March 21 that it had filed a motion in a Washington D.C. court, dated March 8. US accuses Google of concealing documents as part of an illegal monopoly investigation.
Employees at all levels trained to mobilize lawyer-client secrecy
The Department of Justice accuses (pdf) Google of “training its employees to use attorney-client privilege to conceal ordinary business communications in litigation and government investigations”. A program called “Communicate with Care” has reportedly been entirely devoted to this mission for nearly a decade.
The directive to add a company lawyer to a chain message was said to have been repeated at least twice. A first time in 2016, on the occasion of the launch of the investigation by the European Commission for abuse of a dominant position with Android. The second when the investigation by prosecutors and the US Department of Justice was triggered into the group’s research and advertising activities.
Google employees added standard phrases in their email chains such as pls advise, privileged, adding legal, etc., thousands of documents are added with this type of term. A lawyer is also copied on the discussions. As many future justification to transmit, if necessary, redacted documents to justice.
For the US government, “these communications are not genuine requests for legal advice, but rather an effort to hide potential evidence”. The prosecution presents several examples deemed edifying.
In March 2020, a Google VP openly said in a discussion about trade negotiations that he was adding a lawyer because his message would contain “trigger words.” In this case, the Department of Justice reports that “The attorney included did not respond to any of the chain’s next approximately 25 emails and was ultimately removed from the thread entirely, confirming that his inclusion had no not for the legitimate purpose of seeking legal advice”.
Sundar Pichai himself, the CEO of Google and CEO of Alphabet, would have done so during an exchange with Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube. The lawyer assistant to the conversation would never have answered. For antitrust authorities, lawyers, in confidence, have become accustomed to not even bothering to respond to a large number of similar additions.
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