How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

Google 100% provided advice for concealment specifically targeted at future litigation. Gchat logs were specifically reduced company-wide explicitly to avoid court discovery.

I personally saw the advice to cc a lawyer with a legal question in order to bring a conversation under attorney client privilege.

The penalty they’re facing in now way accounts for the money they saved by concealing evidence, which basically means “keep doing it, it works!”

It's illegal to destroy evidence of a crime but it's not illegal to avoid creating evidence in the first place especially if you genuinely believe that you're not doing anything wrong. Generally speaking, companies are not obligated to preserve every chat forever just in case they get sued later on.

I wonder if the widespread adoption of video chat will shake up norms here. Not recording or purging the recording from a Zoom meeting or Zoom-enabled conference room seems exactly as scandalous as using an OTR messenger or a short retention period on email.