Google is accused of destroying evidence in the case of Epic Games

Google and Epic Games haven’t had a great relationship, as there have been some legal battles in the past, mostly related to the Play Store. And it is that, remember that in 2021, Epic sued Google for withdrawing Fortnite from its Play Store. A few months later, Google filed a countersuit against Epic Games, claiming that they benefited. Now Google finds itself in a strange situation, since a judge has accused the company of having destroyed the evidence in the Epic Games case.

These two companies have been embroiled in legal battles over antitrust lawsuits, the Play Store and Fortnite. Specifically, we are now in a case where Google is being sued for having used anti-competitive practices with your Play Store. In this case where it is also involved Epic Gamesboth companies had to present their evidence so that the trial could continue and reach a conclusion in this regard.

Google has been accused of removing evidence in the Epic Games case

Google has been presenting chats as evidence to defend itself against this trial after the Epic Games lawsuit, but according to a judge, these are not valid. Judge James Donato has declared that Google destroyed the evidence

to show your evidence in this trial intentionally. The problem resides in that the chat that could have been used at trial to draw conclusions no longer exist. In this legal battle against Google with lawsuits filed by Epic Gameshe match group and the consumerswe find a turn of events.

The lawsuit focused on Google’s Play Store and accused the company of illegally monopolize the android app market. The judge’s verdict is complemented by the argument that Google has a chat removal system. As indicated, the company delete chats every 24 hoursunless those in charge enable the option of “history on“. Curiously, the judge found in a recently published chat an employee who said that he was going to keep the chat history deactivated, that is, he allowed the chats to be deleted and with it, the evidence.

There are 383 Google employees suspected of having deleted the chats

The judge has ruled that Google has repeatedly given false information. Currently, there is a total of 383 Google employees who are subject to legal detention and 40 of them were in charge of managing the chats. The judge affirms that Google lied since October 2020, when he assured that he had preserved all evidence to extract evidence at trial. At no time did she talk about her chats or the decision not to pause the automatic deletion every 24 hours.

It wasn’t until a year later, in October 2021, that Google finally revealed its chat history system to the plaintiffs. However, nothing had really been revealed, until the California court decided to start investigating and discover that Google was the one who was removing chats that would be used as evidence in the Epic Games case.

Now we just have to wait, since Judge Donato has not decided how to sanction Google. All we know is that for now the company will have to cover attorneys’ fees and costs of the plaintiffs and they in turn will have to send the report with the amount to be paid before the April, the 21st.