Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible.

Two of Google’s A.I. researchers, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper,  shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, just hours after the Justice Department started spelling out plans that could lead to its break up.

The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit, which California, New York and six other states joined, was the fifth by U.S. officials against the company for anticompetitive practices since 2020.