Google has denied allegations that they read the emails of former TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington in order to track down a news leak. Arrington made this accusation this week claiming that the company access his Gmail account and then fired the employee that tipped him off to the news. "Mike makes a serious allegation here — that Google opened email messages in his Gmail account to investigate a leak," Kent Walker, Google general counsel Kent Walker told re/code in a statement. "While our terms of service might legally permit such access, we have never done this and it’s hard for me to imagine circumstances where we would investigate a leak in that way."