What kind of legal guidance were these people getting? When I worked at a big corp, we had regular meetings with legal that were reminders of how to treat sensitive subjects and it was taken very seriously.
Exactly.
When 'fix' means ensure conversations that are already under current legal hold are destroyed, it's clear what legal guidance and training are.
I hope the court nails their execs to the wall for pulling shit like this as a matter of corporate policy.
The kind that looked at the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuits in the 90s, and instead of saying, I dunno, "let's not try and gain and wield illegal monopoly powers" but "let's delete all the evidence of us gaining and wielding illegal monopoly power".
The internal legal guidance they've been getting for this case is likely exactly the same as their internal legal guidance for everything else.
eg "completely full of shit" that they're complying with things
Seems like a bad internal culture, maybe stemming from their weird self belief and exceptionalism because "we're smarter than everyone else"?
Either way, when Google claims things like "We're fully compliant with GDPR, or [other legislation/requirements here]", the documented examples above is why many people don't believe them in the slightest.