The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has requested that Google be subject to court sanctions over the "intentional and repeated destruction" of company chat logs that the US government had expected to use in its antitrust case targeting Google's search business, according to a CNN report citing court documents.
Despite the company's promise to preserve internal communications relevant to the suit, Google maintained a policy of deleting certain employee chats automatically after 24 hours for years, according to a DOJ filing in the District of Columbia federal court, the report said.
The practice has harmed the US government's case against the tech giant, the DOJ claimed. The government's call for sanctions highlights a rare move by prosecutors and adds to the pressure Google faces as it battles antitrust suits on multiple fronts.
In response, Google, owned by Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), refuted the DOJ's claims and stated that it had produced over 4 million documents in the case alone, and millions more to regulators worldwide.
However, through a setting in its chat software, Google employees can save chat history for up to 18 months, but only if the setting is manually enabled, the US government said in its filing.
The DOJ has also cited several exhibits in which Google employees suggested that a conversation continues on the chat platform, with history turned off, indicating that they knew the discussion would be auto-deleted the next day, the CNN report said.
The government's filing follows a similar sanctions motion against Google by Epic Games, maker of the hit video game 'Fortnite', in a separate antitrust case related to Google's app store. The DOJ alleged that Google destroyed records of at least nine individuals who were each considered potential trial witnesses in the Epic Games case.