Google denies destroying 'chat' evidence in U.S. antitrust lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

Google denies destroying 'chat' evidence in U.S. antitrust lawsuit

reuters.com

35 pointsmfiguiere10 comments

Ah yes, the “we didn’t log those things that you explicitly told us to log”, defense. Let’s see how it works out.

I'd be held in contempt of court if I couldn't come up with documents. probably sit in jail until I found them.

well obviously. You're not a billionaire. Billionaires have demonstrated that they are trustworthy and good, otherwise they wouldn't be billionaires. Duh.

More seriously it remains astounding to me that it doesn't matter what executives do, they can always turn around and say "I may have been acting illegally, but I was doing that as the company, so the company should have consequences and I shouldn't".

If I'm in a gang, and taking part in criminal activities as part of being in that gang, I don't get to turn around and say "I was doing that as a gang representative, so I shouldn't go to jail, it's the gang that was breaking the law, and it should pay a fine". For example: googling "gang drug bust" reveals lots of arrests, and lots of people going to jail. But if those gangs incorporated themselves into LLCs they could kill thousands and just pay fines, as Purdue did.

> If I'm in a gang, and taking part in criminal activities as part of being in that gang, I don't get to turn around and say "I was doing that as a gang representative, so I shouldn't go to jail, it's the gang that was breaking the law, and it should pay a fine". For example: googling "gang drug bust" reveals lots of arrests, and lots of people going to jail. But if those gangs incorporated themselves into LLCs they could kill thousands and just pay fines, as Purdue did.

From a legal perspective, selling illegal drugs is an inherently criminal enterprise. By contrast, a mega-corp which violates anti-trust laws is not an inherently criminal enterprise – the underlying business is entirely legal, it is only the anti-competitive business practices which are illegal. And drawing the boundary between legal and illegal business practices, and the criminally illegal vs the merely civilly illegal, can involve a lot of debatable judgement calls about legal grey areas and technicalities, subjective psychological states of business executives (intentions, "understandings"), etc. Illegal drugs are much more black or white in practice – are these bags of white powder cocaine or sugar? And if cocaine, do you have a government license to manufacture/possess/sell it? A drug gang incorporating itself as an LLC wouldn't put itself legally in any better position than it is without being one.

And Purdue Pharmaceuticals didn't "kill thousands" in the same way as a drug gang does – through selling illegal drugs or through murder. If a drug gang was doing what Purdue did – marketing legal prescription pharmaceuticals, in full possession of the necessary government licenses/approvals for doing so, but doing so in a way which was reckless to the harm they were causing to patients – then a drug gang would probably only get fined just like Purdue did. But then nobody would call it a "drug gang", we'd all call it a "pharmaceutical company"

When I think about "flattening of corporate management," this immediately comes to mind.

Personal conversations aren't documents.

Using a company communication system is not a personal conversation. Even if it was, they were told and agreed to keep them and then didn't.

So basically, if you're WFH, every single word you utter over a chat is now "corporate document" which effectively means you're now codifying complete surveillance of everything you say for a third of your life?

Google has previously shown in released messages that it knows chats are a "safer" place to discuss sensitive topics and employees were given the ability to not preserve them, and so Google knowingly misled the DOJ and intentionally still deleted the chats probably thinking they could just get away with it. That's clearly what the DOJ is also arguing.

When your company is being sued, yes, corporate communication channels become increasingly monitored and not just a line in the employment agreement.

Do you happen to have a reference?

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