Google “systematically destroyed” instant message chats every 24 hours, violating federal rules to preserve potentially relevant communications for litigation, the Department of Justice alleged in a filing that became public on Thursday.
As a result of Google’s default to preserve chats for only 24 hours unless an employee opts to turn on history for the conversation, “for nearly four years, Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours,” the department wrote in the filing.
According to the DOJ, Google should have adjusted its defaults in mid-2019 “when the company reasonably anticipated this litigation.” Instead, it relied on individual employees to decide when chats were potentially relevant to future litigation, the department said.
“Few, if any,” did, according to DOJ.
Meanwhile, investigators alleged, Google “falsely” told the government it had “‘put a legal hold in place’ that ‘suspends auto-deletion.'” The government added that “at every turn, Google reaffirmed that it was preserving and searching all potentially relevant written communications.”
The data deletion continued up until as recently as this month when the government indicated it would file a motion for sanctions and an evidentiary hearing, investigators allege. At that point, the DOJ said, Google committed to “permanently set to history on.”
A Google spokesperson said in a statement company officials “strongly refute the DOJ’s claims. Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation. In fact, we have produced over 4 million documents in this case alone, and millions more to regulators around the world.”
The alleged issue is one that previously came up in Epic Games’ antitrust litigation against Google.
Epic submitted exhibits in that case that seemed to show some Google employees believed chats were a safer place to conduct sensitive conversations. For example, one exhibit shows an employee comment on a document that says “Since it’s a sensitive topic, I prefer to discuss offline or over hangout,” referring to Google’s chat product.
The parties in that suit hashed out the issue in front of a federal judge in the Northern District of California this year in two evidentiary hearings.
At one of those hearings on Jan. 31, Judge James Donato indicated he would be open to a kind of adverse jury instruction, but one that would allow the jury to draw its own conclusions on what the deletion of messages means for the case.
An adverse jury instruction, in its most stringent form, would instruct a jury that it should assume that the relevant documents that were destroyed would have cast Google in a negative light, according to Eileen Scallen, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, an expert in evidence and civil procedure. A lesser remedy could be to instruct the jury to not hold it against the plaintiff for not having specific documents to back up its claims.
Donato telegraphed that he might issue an instruction that falls somewhere in between, stressing his language was subject to change. He said such an instruction may be something along the lines of telling the jury that if it finds Google didn’t adequately preserve some documents, it may conclude those documents were adverse to the company’s interests.
While it’s difficult to replace the value of documents that could have become important evidence, Scallen said an adverse jury instruction is considered “very damning.”
“The one person the jury respects in a courtroom is the trial judge,” Scallen said in a phone interview late last month regarding the Epic case. “And if the trial judge is telling them you can presume that this was bad news for Google, they’re going to take that to heart.”
The DOJ alleged that even after Epic confronted Google about the chat-deletion concerns in that case, the tech giant still withheld its deletion policy from the federal government “and continued to destroy written communications in this case.”
The practices denied the federal prosecutors the chance to view “candid discussions between Google’s executives, including likely trial witnesses,” the government claimed.
The Justice Department is asking that the court hold that Google violated a federal rule of civil procedure by destroying the chats, order a hearing to figure out how to sanction the company and remedy the alleged destruction of evidence and order it to provide more information about its chat practices.
Scallen said that if Google “didn’t give clear directions to retain” relevant chats “this notion that they left it to the individuals, that’s just not responsible.”
The slump in stocks can partly be traced to a turnaround in sentiment regarding artificial intelligence. Tech behemoths such as Nvidia, Broadcom and Oracle slumped, with the last losing more than one-third in value since it rocketed 36% in September.
Investors, it seems, are growing worried over the high valuations of tech names, as well as the gigantic amount of capital expenditure they are committing to — with some, like Oracle, having to take on debt to fulfil those obligations.
Uncertainty over an interest rate cut in December is also putting a downer on Wall Street. It’s a coin toss as to whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will ease monetary policy then, according to the CME FedWatch tool. That’s a huge difference from a month ago, when traders were pricing in a 95.5% chance of a December cut.
Not having October’s employment and inflation numbers, and possibly never getting them, means the Fed lacks visibility into the state of the economy — and whether it should try to support the labor market or continue reining in inflation.
After all, flying blind makes it hard to see where you’ll land. As of now, that applies both to the Fed and investors trying to navigate the still-hazy ambitions of tech companies.
What you need to know today
And finally…
Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk speaks at a Q&A following a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas, U.S., Sept. 23, 2025.
Two months ago, Oracle’s stock soared 36% to a record after the company blew away investors with its forecast for cloud infrastructure revenue. Since then, the company has lost one-third of its value, more than wiping out those gains.
The mood of late has turned, with investors questioning whether the AI market ran too far, too fast and whether OpenAI can live up to its $300 billion commitment to Oracle over five years. Of the big cloud companies in the GPU business, Oracle is expected to generate the least amount of free cash flow, said Jackson Ader, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Ticket reseller StubHub signage on display at the New York Stock Exchange for the company’s IPO on Sept. 17, 2025.
NYSE
StubHub shares plunged 20% in extended trading on Thursday after the company reported quarterly results for the first time since its initial public offering in September.
Here’s how the ticket vendor did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Loss per share: $4.27
Revenue: $468.1 million vs. $452 million expected
During a conference call with investors, StubHub CEO and founder Eric Baker said the company wouldn’t provide guidance for the current quarter.
Baker said that the company takes “a long term approach,” adding that the timing of when tickets go on sale can vary, making it hard to predict consumer demand. StubHub plans to offer outlook for 2026 when it reports fourth-quarter results, he said.
“The demand for live events is phenomenal,” Baker said. “We don’t see anything with consumer demand that’s any different.”
Revenue increased 8% in its second quarter from $433.8 million a year earlier, the company said.
StubHub reported a net loss of $1.33 billion, or a loss of $4.27 per share, compared to a net loss of $45.9 million, or a loss of 15 cents per share, during the same period last year. StubHub said this reflects a one-time stock-based compensation charge of $1.4 billion stemming from its IPO.
Gross merchandise sales, which represent the total dollar value paid by ticket buyers, rose 11% year over year to $2.43 billion.
The company faced tough comparisons from a year earlier, when results were boosted by Taylor Swift’s massively popular Eras Tour. Excluding that impact, StubHub said GMS grew 24% year over year.
Founded in 2000, StubHub primarily generates revenue from connecting buyers with ticket resellers. It competes with Vivid Seats, which was taken public via a special purpose acquisition company in 2021; SeatGeek; and Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment.
“We are building a truly differentiated consumer product that improves the experience for fans while unlocking better economics for venues, teams, and artists through open distribution,” Baker said in a statement. “We’re early in that journey, but our progress so far gives us great confidence in our strategy and the long-term value we’re creating.”
StubHub raised $800 million in its long-awaited IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, which came after it delayed its debut twice. The most recent stall came in April after President Donald Trump‘s announcement of sweeping tariffs roiled markets. The company restarted the process to go public in August when it filed an updated prospectus.
On Thursday, the company’s stock closed at $18.82. Shares are now down roughly 20% from the IPO price of $23.50.
The Google corporate logo hangs outside the Google Germany offices on August 31, 2021 in Berlin, Germany.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Google said on Thursday said it has disrupted the foreign cybercriminal group behind a massive SMS text phishing operation within 24 hours of filing its lawsuit.
“This shut down of Lighthouse’s operations is a win for everyone,” said Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado. “We will continue to hold malicious scammers accountable and protect consumers.”
Google filed the suit early Wednesday, seeking to dismantle the organization that some cyber experts have dubbed the “Smishing Triad,” which used a phishing kit named “Lighthouse” to generate and deploy attacks using fake texts.
The company provided translated Telegram messages allegedly posted by the group’s ringleader.
“Our cloud server has been blocked due to malicious complaints. Please be patient and we will restore it as soon as possible!” one message read.
Another message stated that “The reopening date will be announced separately.”
Google did not provide specifics on how the operation was shut down.
Read more CNBC tech news
The crime group had harmed at least 1 million victims across over 120 countries, Google said in a release.
Victims would receive texts containing malicious links to fraudulent websites designed to steal sensitive financial information, including Social Security numbers and banking credentials.
The messages often appeared as fake delivery updates, unpaid fees notifications, fraud alerts, and other texts designed to appear urgent.
“They were preying on users’ trust in reputable brands such as E-ZPass, the U.S. Postal Service, and even us as Google,” DeLaine Prado previously told CNBC.
The company said that it found over 100 templates generated by Lighthouse using the company’s branding to trick victims into thinking the sites were legitimate.
