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How to Hide a $2 Trillion (Google) Antitrust Trial (www.thebignewsletter.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We did an analysis of the Google antitrust trial. Last week, over half of the trial was held behind closed doors because the judge, Amit Mehta, is deferring to Google on the need for secrecy.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It's really shitty that this trial is being kept secret. Even if it's a fair trial, it sure doesn't have the appearance of a fair trial. I guess Google would prefer the appearance of a corrupt trial if the alternative is embarrassing information getting out.

Having said that, I really don't get the issue with this:

when Google executives used “history-off chats” to destroy conversations after 24 hours even after Google was on a litigation hold.

You're not allowed to destroy past chats / emails after you've been notified you're on a litigation hold. That makes sense. You can't shred any documents or delete any emails. But, this seems to be about current / future communications. It sounds like they started a history-off chat after the lawsuit started, and they may (or may not) have discussed things relevant to the case. AFAIK the default is history-off for chats within Google. So, they'd have had to specifically turn on history for any new chat.

So, what does that mean. If they're sued, any current or future communications between executives there have to be history-on communications in case in the future something they say is related to the trial? Are they allowed to chat in person? If they do, is it mandatory that those chats be recorded and transcribed?

If some communication is allowed to be off-the-record (say a personal chat with someone), it seems weird to say ok, but if you use a text-based program to chat, you can't have to keep transcripts of that chat and give them to us.