Justice Department officials on Thursday said Alphabet Inc.’s

GOOGL

GOOG

Google destroyed evidence related to an antitrust lawsuit that looks at how the company maintained its internet search dominance. The government asked a federal judge to sanction Google for its former practice of setting employee chats to auto-delete despite the company having told the court it would preserve records required for litigation, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. A Google spokesperson told the Journal the company disputes the Justice Department’s claims. “Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation,” the spokesperson said. “In fact, we have produced over 4 million documents in this case alone, and millions more to regulators around the world.”