Google's workaround to avoid antitrust regulatory eyes is revelatory of a "culture of concealment." The search engine giant engaged in its "don't save anything" policy for over 15 years to avoid anything that showed the company in a bad light.

Per the New York Times, the Alphabet company has been deploying the strategy from as early as 2008, when it was embroiled in an antitrust suit over an advertising deal with its former rival Yahoo. In its internal memo to Googlers, the tech firm stated that the employees should refrain from sarcasm and speculations and not comment without having all the facts in order. The memo that was signed by Google's top lawyer Kent Walker and engineer executive Bill Coughran, also advised the staff to think twice before writing. Even the internal communications were tweaked to "off the record," with messages purged the next day, keeping no history. Per the report, Google encouraged employees to add "attorney-client privilege" even on documents that had no legal questions involved. In 2017 Google-owned YouTube's chief business officer, Robert Kyncl, asked Susan Wojcicki if a "privileged doc" could be sent to the fax machine at home as they didn't want to send it over mail. In one of the cases involving the company's advertising technology, the Virginia district court's judge noted that Google's document retention policies are designed in such a way that "an awful lot of documents were likely destroyed."

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"Definition of evil," dubbed one netizen online taking a jibe at Google's motto, "Don't Be Evil."

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