The Fight For Evidence Concerns A DoJ Lawsuit Filed Against Google
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Google is defending itself against two separate antitrust lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice and groups of states. In addition to the lawsuit over Google's search engine dominance, last month the Department of Justice sued the company for its adtech business practices.
Allegations
The Department of Justice says Google has a history of automatically deleting employee chats. The Department of Justice said Google employees routinely discussed "relevant and sensitive matters" using a messenger that was said to delete chats after 24 hours.
The Department of Justice said Google destroyed written documents needed for an antitrust lawsuit that focuses on how the company maintained its dominance in Internet search.
The government asked a federal judge on Thursday to sanction Google for its past practice of automatically removing employee chats, even though the company told the court it would keep records required for litigation.
The Department of Justice said in court Thursday that Google had trained employees on the benefits of using "unregistered chat rooms."
The government said the company only pledged this week to permanently preserving its employees' chat messages - after Justice Department officials told Google it would file a sanctions request.
Application for sanctions
Department of Justice attorneys said the deleted chats may have contained particularly sensitive information and revealed frank discussions between executives. The government has asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to impose sanctions on Google after holding a hearing where its conduct could be investigated.
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Antitrust lawsuit
Google's growth in various lines of business over the years has widened its circle of critics, with competitors and some customers complaining about its tactics.
The lawsuit filed in January this year alleges that Google abused its role as one of the largest brokers, providers and online auctioneers of advertisements placed on websites and mobile applications. The filing promises a protracted legal battle with far-reaching implications for the digital advertising industry.
The Department of Justice has filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit, alleging that Google is using anti-competitive tactics to maintain a monopoly over its flagship search engine and related advertising business, in the most aggressive legal challenge to the company's dominance in the tech sector in more than two decades.
The government claimed that Google is using billions of dollars raised from advertising on its platform to pay mobile phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers such as Apple Inc.'s Safari to keep Google as the default search engine, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of dominance.
The result is that Google ranks #1 in search across hundreds of millions of devices in the US, with little chance for any other company to break into the market.
The Department of Justice is also continuing to investigate Google's ad technology practices.
Alphabet gets about 80% of its business from advertising. A new Justice Department lawsuit targets a subset of this ad business that brokers the buying and selling of ads on other websites and apps.
Alphabet share price
Since mid-February, Alphabet's stock has fallen significantly towards 90.00. Most recently, GOOG stock closed at 91.07.
Source: wsj.com, finance.yahoo.com
