https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/google-routinely...
The issue here is not so much that Google is playing these games but how this draws energy away from OTHER games-- i.e. shipping and keeping alive new products and offering real customer service for existing ones.
People would add lawyers like this, but (a) it wasn't something the trainings said to do, (b) the lawyers hated it, and (c) it doesn't work.
(I used to work at Google, speaking only for myself)
[1]: https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/03/22/memo_in_support-to-sanctio...
As a taxpayer and Google shareholder, I definitely want technical talent diverted into making real products versus playing epistemic games with the DOJ or finding new creative ways to subvert discovery. We wasted enough fighting Microsoft, we don’t need to do it again just because Googlers think they’re better.
(Not a lawyer)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_master#The_Mar-a-Lago_...
From the Ars article:
> In 2016, Google instructed employees to create artificial indicia of privilege for all written communications related to revenue-share agreements and Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADAs), the exclusionary agreements at the heart of this action. Google reiterated those instructions after the Department of Justice issued its first Civil Investigative Demand in the investigation preceding this case. The Court should, therefore, sanction Google for its deliberate and deceptive misuse of the attorney-client privilege and order the company to produce, unredacted, all emails between non-attorneys where included in-house counsel did not bother to reply, indicating that any request for legal advice was most likely a pretext.