Google was cautioned to preserve evidence in a landmark ruling

In a landmark court decision, Google was chastised for hiding potentially relevant evidence in the case, and other businesses were cautioned about corporate evidence preservation.

The landmark Google court decision also found that Alphabet's Google illegally monopolizes Web search. Although he declined to formally censure the business, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., chastised Google for allegedly failing to preserve internal talks and misusing protections for legal communications. Mehta was requested by the U.S. Justice Department to penalize Google for what the government said was the company's gross abuse of the attorney-client privilege, which protects conversations between attorneys, and its systematic destruction of employee texts.

Mehta stated that determining whether Google broke antitrust laws did not require judging the company's evidence handling practices. Regarding Mehta's ambiguous decision about the legal implications of the Google case, both Google and the Justice Department chose not to respond. Google said on Monday that it will appeal the court's decision and deny breaking any antitrust laws. Additionally, it has denied mishandling any evidence.

Employee chat conversations on Google were automatically erased after 24 hours unless the user clicked the "history on" button to keep the messages. This was a long-standing practice at Google. In order to better secure discussions, the policy was modified last year. Mehta also took issue with Google for its "communicate with care" campaign, in which staff members added attorneys to messages and labeled them as "attorney/client privileged."

The controversy over Google's chat logs has extended to other legal cases that call into question the company's corporate practices. A federal judge in California determined last year in a lawsuit filed by the makers of "Fortnite," Epic Games, that Google had "willfully" failed to save relevant conversation data. Epic prevailed in that trial on the grounds that Google was excessively controlling the Android app market.

Arguments on the destruction of evidence in the Justice Department's case against Google regarding its digital advertising practices will be heard by a federal judge in Virginia later this month. The following month is set aside for a non-jury trial.