Within Google, there is a culture of not saving documents that could serve as evidence in court, and measures such as deleting internal chat history, communicating by fax, and giving lectures on the prohibition of using dangerous words are implemented.

In the United States, there is a mechanism called ' legal hold ,' which requires the target of a lawsuit to preserve relevant documents. However, Google has built a mechanism within the company to prevent the creation and preservation of documents that could serve as evidence in a lawsuit, and has been accused of 'hiding evidence' in multiple lawsuits.

How Google Spent 15 Years Concealing Its Internal Conversations - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-antitrust-employee-messages.html

Google's internal chat has a feature that allows users to delete chat history in 24 hours, which has frequently been problematic as it amounts to the destruction of evidence. For example, in a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Google for violating antitrust laws , the Department of Justice had asked Google to stop deleting chat history about a year before the lawsuit was filed, but Google continued to delete chat history. The Department of Justice is asking the judge to impose sanctions on Google for attempting to destroy evidence by deleting chat history.

Department of Justice announces that Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit - GIGAZINE

It was also pointed out in the lawsuit filed by Epic Games against Google that Google had deleted chat histories. Judge James Donato of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, who presided over the lawsuit, stated, 'Google intentionally subverted the discovery process. There is evidence showing that chats between Google employees were deleted to prevent them from being used in litigation,' concluding that it was justified to impose sanctions on Google.

Google is punished by court for 'destroying evidence' and 'making multiple false reports' in lawsuit against Epic Games - GIGAZINE

The New York Times calls Google's destruction of evidence 'the Marie Kondo of corporations,' and says that Google's tendency to destroy evidence is strongly influenced by the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit. In 1998, the Department of Justice sued Microsoft for violating antitrust laws, and emails sent by Microsoft executives containing phrases such as 'We need to continue our jihad next year' and 'We want you to knife the baby' were used as evidence. The New York Times points out that this case gave Google a reason to be wary of documents and ambiguous comments.

When Google was founded, it was tolerant of email and chat, and 10 years after its founding, it was sending 13 times as many emails as a typical company. However, as Google became more and more sued, a 'culture of leaving no evidence' spread. A memo titled 'Antitrust Basics for Search Teams' written in 2011 included examples of countermeasures such as 'avoiding metaphors related to war, sports, winning and losing' and 'avoiding words such as market, market share, and dominance.'

In addition, the educational materials for new employees stated that 'even the expression 'transferring products to new customers' could be perceived as 'denying consumers' right to choose.' For this reason, its use should be avoided.' Furthermore, it was discovered that there was an internal document called 'Five Rules' that urged employees to refrain from using words related to the Antimonopoly Act.

It is pointed out that 'censorship' has made it difficult for Google to even think about antitrust law - GIGAZINE

Some employees were dissatisfied with the 'ability to delete history in 24 hours,' but their proposals were sometimes rejected by their superiors. For example, in 2021, Daniel Roman, Google's vice president of trust, responded to an employee who asked to disable the history deletion feature in group chats by saying, 'The discussion that sparked this conversation could escalate into a legal issue, so we need to proceed with caution. I would like to maintain the history deletion feature.'

There was also a move to avoid communication methods that leave traces, such as email and chat. For example, Robert Kinkel, who was an executive at YouTube at the time, is said to have suggested to Susan Wojcicki that they share information by fax.

According to the New York Times, Google will disable the '24-hour deletion feature' as a standard feature in 2023, but employees who do not want their chat history to be disclosed are secretly forming chat groups on WhatsApp.