Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stand as a witness Tuesday in the search giant’s antitrust trial against “Fortnite” maker Epic Games, and immediately faced aggressive questioning about the company’s record-keeping practices. technology giant.
An Epic Games lawyer fired questions at Pichai about the video game publisher’s accusations that the Google chief has encouraged internal communications to be withheld from agents scrutinizing the company for antitrust violations. according to Bloomberg.
Responding to questions from Epic attorney Lauren Moskowitz on Tuesday, Pichai said he marked some emails with the attorney-client privilege label as he was instructed to do when seeking legal advice and also so that they “would not be forwarded,” according to Bloomberg.
The practice is part of Google’s “Communicate Carefully” program, under which staff were instructed to excessively copy company lawyers in internal conversations, even when it wasn’t technically necessary.
Staff were encouraged to have confidential conversations via chat with the history feature disabled, meaning the conversation would be automatically deleted after 24 hours, Bloomberg reported, a rule that Pichai admitted on the stand he followed.
If the 51-year-old tech boss had turned on this history setting, he would have saved his Google chats when a court ordered the company to retain certain records.
After holding so many positions at Google, where Pichai’s historic path to CEO began in the product management division in 2004, there is no doubt that Pichai’s internal messages contain sensitive information.
Pichai, who also held positions at Google helping shape Android strategy and leading development of the Chrome browser, has been front and center as Google struggles to avoid a series of regulatory challenges while Epic’s lawyer seeks to demonstrate his belief in that Google has maintained an illegal monopoly on the Android application market through its “Play” store.
Last month, the Justice Department questioned Pichai about Google’s destruction of internal chat logs as part of its historic attempt to dismantle the company’s online search empire.
Google CFO Ruth Porat and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney are also expected to testify in the app store’s antitrust trial.
The case is expected to last approximately four weeks and conclude in early December.
Early in the trial, the 10-person jury was told that Google once gave “Call of Duty” parent Activision-Blizzard a whopping $360 million in incentives to launch its video game on the Play Store. .
Epic alleges that the payment strategy, known as “Project Hug,” was a “bribery and blocking” scheme intended to discourage companies from creating their own app stores.
At the time, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick had reportedly complained about Google’s policy of taking a 30% cut of revenue from in-app purchases.
The lawsuit dates back to 2020, when “Fortnite” was removed from the Google Play store after Epic enabled a feature that allowed customers to pay for it directly.
Epic filed a similar lawsuit against Apple, which resulted in a split verdict that primarily favored Apple.
Both companies have appealed that ruling before the Supreme Court.
