Google achieved metonymy for online searches. He is the one who has best mastered the organization, classification and storage of information. However, it has spent more than a decade teaching its employees to do exactly the opposite: delete, hide and minimize their internal communications so that no trace of them remains, it has been revealed. The New York Times thanks to the antitrust investigation that Google is under.
Why is it important. This systematic removal of much of the internal documentation has caused three federal judges to harshly criticize Alphabet. They point to a corporate culture designed to hinder potential antitrust investigations of the future… like the one it is in right now that threatens to break up the company.
behind the scenes. It all started in 2008. After undergoing antitrust scrutiny for its advertising deal with Yahoo, Google circulated a confidential internal memo urging its employees to “think twice” before writing about “hot topics” and avoid speculation.
In detail. Google implemented several strategies:
- You configured your instant messaging tools to delete conversations by default after a while.
- It encouraged the indiscriminate use of the attorney-client privilege.
- He created lists of prohibited words related to the dominant position in the markets.
- He instructed workers to include lawyers in the emails even if there was no legal need.
Go deeper. The magnitude of the problem was exposed when the Department of Justice revealed that Google had withheld tens of thousands of documents citing confidentiality privileges. The courts rejected that way of looking at it.
Judge James Donato, of the Northern District of California, already defined it almost a year ago as “a frontal attack on the fair administration of justice,” while Judge Leonie Brinkema, of Eastern Virginia, noted that “a terrible amount of evidence was probably destroyed.”
The turn. In 2023 Google turned these policies around. Since then, it saves all communications by default and there is a record of those conversations. However, some employees soon found an alternative in which they felt more comfortable: WhatsApp groups with automatic message deletion.
The irony is evident. The company that built its empire by promising to organize the world’s information spent years training its employees in the art of leaving no trace. Something that can now be perceived as a corporate culture based on secrecy, mistrust and the prevention of future risks by refusing to leave a trace.
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