Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]
This is....amazing. As I understand it:<p>Chats at google by default have 24 hours of chat history. (That is, after 24 hours, the chat history is delelted.) You can opt in to having 30 days of chat history instead. And when under a legal hold, Google continues to delete chats in the 24 hour history mode, but will not delete chats in the 30 day history mode.<p>That is, Google&#x27;s theory here seems to be that if you have a policy to destroy certain letters and memos 24 hours after receiving or creating them, then you don&#x27;t need to stop doing that and preserve them even if under a court ordered legal hold. But if your policy is to destroy certain documents 30 days after creating them, then you must stop deleting them and retain them if ordered by a court.<p>Which is....a.....theory!<p>I think it&#x27;s fine for Google to have a policy to delete chats by default after 24 hours, and...probably fine for some executives to strongly prefer to use the 24 hour history mode by default just in case they get sued sometime in the next 30 days. What I don&#x27;t understand is what argument exists for why you can delete relevant records <i>after</i> you&#x27;re under a legal hold.<p>I guess there&#x27;s a little complexity here in that Google seems to have called (and thought of) these chats as being off the record - that is, they weren&#x27;t chats with recordings deleted automatically after 24 hours, they were chats that had no recordings and just happened to have chat history that stuck around for 24 hours. From a technical point of view, that&#x27;s nonsense; the chat history is absolutely a recording, and slapping a label on top saying &quot;off the record&quot; doesn&#x27;t change that. But eh, maybe it&#x27;ll be more convincing to the judge.