Google Says Employees Can Discuss Antitrust Case

When Google lost its landmark antitrust trial in August, Kent Walker, its top lawyer, reminded employees, for the third time, that they were not allowed to discuss the case with one another or anyone outside the company.

On Friday afternoon, Google rescinded the command as part of a settlement with the Alphabet Workers Union, a group representing some of its employees and contractors, according to an email Google sent to workers that was viewed by The New York Times. Alphabet is the parent company of Google.

The company told employees it would not “announce or maintain overbroad rules or policies that restrict your right to comment, internally or externally,” about how the antitrust lawsuit targeting Google’s search engine might affect the terms and conditions of their employment.

Google’s change of tune was part of a settlement overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. The union had filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the N.L.R.B. concerning Mr. Walker’s note in August.

The agreement is another blow to Google’s corporate policies designed to maintain secrecy, which have been scrutinized amid the search case brought by the Justice Department. It also undercut Google’s strategy to keep its business humming during the lawsuit — to have employees ignore the antitrust battle and remain focused on their work.

Mr. Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, first told employees not to discuss the case when it was filed in October 2020, according to an email viewed by The Times.

“It’s important not to get distracted by this process, including not speculating on legal issues internally or externally,” he wrote, instead directing employees to focus on building great products and services to help people.

He repeated the call in September 2023, when the case went to trial, and did so again in August, when Google lost that trial. The N.L.R.B. settlement only concerned that final note.

Two months later, Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, tried to clarify that Mr. Walker’s instructions referred to speaking on Google’s behalf to the public.

“That was the basis of Kent’s earlier request that Googlers refrain from commenting on” the case, she said.

Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokeswoman, said that the company disagreed with the N.L.R.B.’s interpretation of its “reasonable request that employees not comment on a pending legal case on behalf of Google without approval.”

“To avoid lengthy litigation, we agreed to remind employees that they have the right to talk about their employment, as they’ve always been free to and regularly do,” she added.

The Justice Department has called for a breakup of Google, including a divestment of Chrome, its popular web browser, among other remedies meant to restore competition in search. Amit P. Mehta, a federal judge, will decide what remedies to impose by August.

It’s been hard to tune all of the legal machinations out, Stephen McMurtry, a senior software engineer at Google search and a member of the union, said in an interview.

“Amongst employees generally, there is fear of instability that the breakups could provide to our employment, working conditions, compensation, all sorts of things,” Mr. McMurtry said.

Like other large tech companies, Google has established a pattern of secrecy in its culture and corporate communications. After Microsoft’s legal defense was hamstrung by damaging emails during its antitrust trial a quarter century ago, Google tried to learn from the company’s example by telling employees not to say anything that might make the company’s conduct sound anticompetitive.

Google also routinely discussed sensitive business matters in instant messages that were automatically deleted, though the company said it handed over many chats to the Justice Department.