Google Play Store Trial: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai Admits To 'Automatically' Not Retaining Documents

During his testimony, Pichai indicated support for recommendations from legal and compliance team, explaining his use of "privileged" to denote confidentiality rather than attorney-client privilege.

Google argues that altering its systems would compromise security and harm its ability to compete with Apple.

Source : Getty

In a federal court session on Tuesday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai admitted to occasionally designating documents as "privileged" and maintaining a setting that caused internal conversations to automatically delete after one day. Pichai's appearance in a San Francisco court was part of Alphabet's Google defence against a lawsuit by Epic Games, alleging that the app store policies constitute an unlawful monopoly, leading to inflated consumer prices.

Epic Games' attorneys seemed focused on establishing the possibility that Pichai and Google were hiding sensitive communications that could be used against them in a potential trial. Jurors were presented with internal Google documents cautioning employees that anything they write could be subject to legal discovery and Pichai's chat history where he requested the history be turned off, resulting in message erasure.

During his testimony, Pichai indicated support for recommendations from the legal and compliance team, explaining his use of "privileged" to denote confidentiality rather than attorney-client privilege. Under questioning from the judge, he acknowledged that, until recently, Google left it to employees to determine the relevance of their chats to litigation, a policy that has since been revised.

Epic Games' lawsuit contends that app store policies create an illegal monopoly, leading to artificially high prices for consumers. The company advocates for easier access to third-party app stores and additional payment processors for Google Play users.

Google argues that altering its systems would compromise security and harm its ability to compete with Apple. Epic's similar lawsuit against Apple resulted in a mostly favourable ruling for the tech giant, with both companies appealing to the US Supreme Court.

Epic initiated the case against Google in 2020 after Fortnite was removed from the app store for enabling direct payments, bypassing Google's system. A favourable verdict for Epic could significantly impact the app store business, where Google and Apple control app availability and receive a 30 per cent cut of in-app purchases and paid downloads.

Google has settled with Match Group and US consumers and states over app store claims. Additionally, the company faces an antitrust trial over search dominance allegations and is expected to defend its digital advertising policies in a trial next year.

Separately, Pichai confirmed that Google pays Apple 36 per cent of search revenue on iOS to be the default search engine, a figure revealed during Google's ongoing antitrust trial in federal court in Washington, D.C. These payments are central to the Justice Department's case.