Judge Mulls Sanctions Over Google’s Routine Destruction of Chat History ⇥ arstechnica.com

Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica:

Near the end of the second day of closing arguments in the Google monopoly trial, US district judge Amit Mehta weighed whether sanctions were warranted over what the US Department of Justice described as Google’s “routine, regular, and normal destruction” of evidence.

[…]

According to the DOJ, Google destroyed potentially hundreds of thousands of chat sessions not just during their investigation but also during litigation. Google only stopped the practice after the DOJ discovered the policy. […]

It is entirely reasonable for individuals to conduct themselves privately and off-the-record, but an official corporate policy built around specific topics seems like a different matter. That Google kept it up even after the DOJ got involved is particularly shady.