Dirty tricks: Google lied and cheated, federal court judges in monopoly cases say

A high-ranking Google director was texting with two of the company’s executives about digital-ads prices when he mentioned that the changes they were discussing could lead to lawsuits. Suddenly, he realized the chat’s history function was on, so the conversation would not be automatically deleted, and could be found by adversaries in any legal actions.

“History is on, jesus,” the director texted. “Sigh.”

Incidents like this, filed as evidence in three ongoing anti-monopoly cases brought against Google, have highlighted what state and federal authorities say are the Mountain View technology giant’s long-running machinations to conceal and destroy internal communications that could be used by regulators or against it in court.

The tactics led a Virginia federal court judge to conclude that an “awful lot of evidence has likely been destroyed,” and provoked a San Francisco federal court judge to criticize Google for lying to the court and deliberately hiding evidence from opponents.

“It’s like they’ve developed their own moral code, and that moral code is to justify whatever decisions they make,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade association representing online publishers, who has been closely following the cases.

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