"Federal Judge Launches Investigation into Google's Deliberate Chat Destruction"
Federal Judge James Donato overseeing the Epic v. Google case has vowed to investigate Google for intentionally and systematically suppressing evidence, calling it a "frontal assault on the fair administration of justice." Testimony revealed that Google automatically deleted chat messages between employees, including CEO Sundar Pichai, who admitted to not changing the auto-delete setting even after being aware of their legal obligation to preserve evidence. The judge expressed deep concern over Google's conduct but decided not to issue a mandatory inference instruction to the jury, instead allowing them to decide whether the missing evidence might have helped Epic and hurt Google. The investigation into Google's actions will be pursued separately from the trial.