Google CEO Sundar Pichai is set to testify Monday in Washington, DC, where he will reportedly be questioned about encouraging his employees to keep their messages private. The company has a long-documented history of frustrating legal discovery by using private messaging tools that don’t keep logs of conversations. A lawyer for the DOJ explained in court, “So what did Google do? They destroyed documents for years because they knew their conduct violated the antitrust laws. They turned history off, Your Honor, so that they could rewrite it here in this courtroom.”
The DOJ is expected to ask Google CEO Sundar Pichai to explain why he told employees in at least one recorded conversation from 2021 to “change the setting of this group to history off,” sources told On The Money.
Sabo mocks Google CEO Sundar Pichai (unsavoryagents.com)
Pichai instructed employees to do this “immediately” after he and the others began “discussing a substantive topic” regarding company business, a court filing in separate antitrust litigation filed against Google reveals.
In that filing, plaintiffs — including three dozen states, Epic Games, and Match Group — said that nine seconds after Pichai urged his employees to make their messages private, he “attempted (unsuccessfully) to delete this incriminating message.”
While court filings have not revealed what was being discussed by Google staff, the filing says the “the newly produced chats reveal a companywide culture of concealment coming from the very top, including CEO Sundar Pichai.”
Sources say the cross-examination of Pichai will be important to the DOJ’s case.
Additionally, the Department of Justice says Google destroyed employee chat messages it was required to save during an antitrust investigation, erasing what could have been key information for its case.
As Breitbart News reported earlier this year, a filing said, “Amazingly, Google’s daily spoliation continued until this week. When the United States indicated that it would file this motion — following months of conferral — Google finally committed to ‘permanently set to history on’ and thus preserve its employees’ chat messages.”
“Here is Google’s CEO in 2021, a year after the case was filed. He writes, ‘Need the link for my leader’s circle tomorrow.’ That’s his C-suite team,” DOJ attorney Ken Dintzer said during his opening statement.
“Then it shows that he knows how the chat system works,” Dintzer continued. “He writes, ‘Also can we change the setting of this group to be history off?’ Nine seconds later this very smart man realizes he’s left an electronic trail and deletes his request.”
“So what did Google do? They destroyed documents for years because they knew their conduct violated the antitrust laws. They turned history off, Your Honor, so that they could rewrite it here in this courtroom,” Dintzer said.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.