Overview
- Google won a court‑supervised auction for roughly $10 million after outbidding Mercor, but the sale remains unapproved and on hold by the Southern District of New York.
- Court filings show the package includes extensive employee records and company files, notably about 100 million emails, payroll and tax records, and hundreds of millions of Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive items.
- The Association of Flight Attendants‑CWA filed an objection arguing that the deal’s promised “deidentification” does not protect confidential employee content or prevent reidentification for small groups.
- Spirit and Google say an independent third party will deidentify the data and that no personal consumer profiles will be transferred, and Judge Sean Lane moved the approval hearing to Sept. 9 to consider the objection.
- A late $12.5 million offer from startup Micro1 seeks to upend the auction but the court will weigh auction integrity against potential higher recovery for creditors, a decision that could shape rules on selling corporate archives for AI and affect unpaid former employees.