The stock has declined by 4 percent during Page’s reign while both the technology driven Nasdaq composite index and the Dow Jones industrial average have gained 2 percent.
In April, the Federal Communications Commission fined Google $25,000 after concluding the company deliberated impeded an investigation into a Google project that scooped up emails, passwords and other personal information transmitted over unsecured wireless networks in homes located around the world.
In a Thursday statement, Google cast itself as a good corporate citizen — an image that it seeks to cultivate as part of its “Don’t Be Evil” motto.
The Texas Attorney General’s office is suing Google, demanding that the Web giant turnover documents it claims were illegally withheld from an antitrust investigation.
The Texas dispute hinges on whether the documents in question are legally protected communications between Google’s lawyers and the company’s employees.
Abbott contends Google is trying to conceal documents that don’t fall under the shield known as attorney client privilege.
The Texas attorney general reached that conclusion after reviewing Google’s justification for withholding the requested documents.
In many instances, Google is asserting the attorney client privilege on communications between non lawyers, according to Abbott’s petition.
The disputed records reflect but don’t contain advice directly from a lawyer, according to the petition.
To prove his point, Abbott wants a Travis County court judge in Texas to review a sampling of the documents that Google is trying to protect to determine if they fall under attorney client privilege.
“The Attorney General’s office believes an in camera review of these examples will likely demonstrate that Google has significantly overreached in its effort to prevent disclosure of documents,” lawyers on Abbott’s staff wrote in the petition.
Google, meanwhile, is asking Abbott’s investigators to return or delete 12 documents that the company had previously turned over, according to the petition.
Alexandra Zucchi is a business journalist based in Hobart, Australia. Alexandra has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Alexandra spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.
