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Google has reportedly advised employees to avoid speculation and sarcasm in communications and has enabled “off the record” messaging to minimise risks of antitrust lawsuits.
The logo of Google LLC is shown on a building in San Diego, California (Photo: Reuters)
Nearly 16 years after Google, in 2008, faced antitrust scrutiny over an advertising deal with its rival Yahoo, the search engine giant has reportedly asked its employees to refrain from speculation and sarcasm and “think twice” before writing one another about “hot topics”.
The employees were also instructed to not comment before they had all the facts.
According to The New York Times, Google’s action, advising its employees to watchout their internal communication, came as it aims to minimise the odds of antitrust suits.
Further, the company has even changed the setting for its instant messaging tool to “off the record”, and An incautious phrase would be wiped the next day, the report claimed.
In 2008, Google had confronted lawsuits involving patent, trademark and copyright claims, while its executives sent out a confidential memo, stating that they “believed that information is good”.
However, they added that government regulators or competitors might seize on words that Google workers casually, thoughtlessly wrote to one another.
The report claims that the memo has become the first salvo in a 15-year campaign by Google to make deletion the default in its internal communications. Even as the internet giant stored the world’s information, it created an office culture that tried to minimise its own, it stated.
The report also stated it pieced together hundreds of documents and exhibits, as well as witness testimony, in three antitrust trials against the Silicon Valley company over the last year to learn about Google’s “distrustful culture”.
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