![\"Mature](\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/12\/GettyImages-486507440-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Google’s big antitrust loss<\/a> is arguably the biggest antitrust development since the Microsoft case a quarter century ago. As much as the opinion shakes up the world of search, it might end up having bigger implications for the nascent artificial intelligence industry if it disrupts Google’s access to all the juicy user data it can use to advance its AI offerings<\/a>.<\/p>\n But within Judge Amit Mehta’s mammoth antitrust opinion is a stern warning about the company’s handling of key evidence — specifically employee chat exchanges, which the company deleted after 24 hours even after knowing there was an antitrust investigation. Judge Mehta declined to sanction Google, noting that the evidence wasn’t necessary to establish the government’s case, but he still wasn’t happy.<\/p>\n Still, the court is taken aback by the lengths to which Google goes to avoid creating a paper trail for regulators and litigants. It is no wonder then that this case has lacked the kind of nakedly anticompetitive communications seen in Microsoft and other Section 2 cases…. Google clearly took to heart the lessons from these cases. It trained its employees, rather effectively, not to create \u201cbad\u201d evidence. Ultimately, it does not matter. Section 2 liability does not rise or fall on whether there is \u201csmoking gun\u201d proof of anticompetitive intent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As the passage notes, the government also complained that Google counseled its employees to avoid antitrust buzzwords in an effort to frustrate potential government investigations.<\/p>\n Which is how the mob works.<\/p>\n Though it is not an ethical lapse on its own. Stringer Bell is absolutely free to counsel his junior colleague not to take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy<\/a>. He can even go ahead and immediately crumple up those notes. But his lawyer cannot destroy those notes after<\/em> the government says they’re on the case knowing that these are relevant custodians.<\/p>\n Enter Jones Day’s former antitrust leader:<\/p>\n