41–50 of 402 posts
No wonder Google execs wanted us all back in the office really quickly in 2021.
I will admit that I suspect some of the reason does indeed lie in having 'impromptu' conversations, which are helpfully not recorded anywhere. The other two pieces are real estate and 'feeling' of control. I am not sure which one bears more weight.
Pardon my ignorance, but why isn't Pichai allowed to have chat conversations that don't record history? Was there a case against Google already that bans this or something? And couldn't this just be circumvented by having an in-person meeting?
> why isn't [...] Was there a case against Google already that bans this or something? According to [1], "The DOJ maintains Google should have suspended its auto-delete practices by 2019, when it was clear litigation was coming." I found more details in [2] on the legal topic of evidence spoliation that might be interesting, though I'm not a lawyer and don't know what which law(s) are relevant in this case. > And cou…
In the article it seems Google's "history off" feature isn't really history-off so much as it simply auto-deletes after 24h. If the chats were never logged, would they have avoided this?
Also how far does the law go regarding deletion - I mean if a message was stored in memory and then released/garbage collected does that still count as "deleting evidence"? Because if so, then virtually any means of electronic communication might be counted as "deleting evidence". For example a voip call audio buffer that gets deleted.
(Just thinking out loud, not that I would ever want to circumvent the law)
Then, nine seconds later, Mr. Pichai apparently attempted (unsuccessfully) to delete this incriminating message. lol
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The complaint details the reason it was not allowed in this case, though would be normally: the topics were subject to legal holds. > Like Mr. Pichai, other key Google employees, including those in leadership roles, routinely opted to move from history-on rooms to history-off Chats to hold sensitive conversations, even though they knew they were subject to legal holds. Indeed, they did so even when discussing topics…
Thanks, I'm not familiar with what a legal hold is. Would they be obliged to take audio recordings or minutes of meetings due to this?
EDIT: And the court in this case took a dim view of it as well: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.37...
> At the heart of this dispute is a simple question: did Google do the right thing with respect to preserving Chat communications in this case? There is no doubt that Google was perfectly free to set up an internal IM service with any retention period of its choosing for employees to use for whatever purposes they liked. The overall propriety of Chat is not in issue here. What matters is how Google responded after the lawsuits were filed, and whether it honored the evidence preservation duties it was abundantly familiar with from countless prior cases. The record establishes that Google fell strikingly short on that score. Several aspects of Google’s conduct are troubling. As Rule 37 indicates, the duty to preserve relevant evidence is an unqualified obligation in all cases. The Court’s Standing Order for Civil Cases expressly spells out the expectation that “as soon as any party reasonably anticipates or knows of litigation, it will take the necessary, affirmative steps to preserve evidence related to the issues presented by the action, including, without limitation, interdiction of any document destruction programs and any ongoing erasures of e-mails, voice mails, and other electronically-recorded material.” Google clearly had different intentions with respect to Chat, but it did not reveal those intentions with candor or directness to the Court or counsel for plaintiffs. Instead, Google falsely assured the Court in a case management statement in October 2020 that it had “taken appropriate steps to preserve all evidence relevant to the issues reasonably evident in this action,” without saying a word about Chats or its decision not to pause the 24-hour default deletion.
I moved from an HFT firm to Google. The attitude difference with respect to document holds was hilarious. At the HFT firm, the attitude was, "we're constantly being sued (by the SEC and others), so we treat all of our records like they're under litigation holds, just in case the SEC claims they wanted them, even the off-topic slack channels." At Google, the attitude was, "we're constantly getting sued, so we treat al…
Finance is default not trusted. If documents are missing, fraud is presumed. Tech doesn’t seem to have reached that point just yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, is there any documentation about the legal holds details?
https://support.google.com/vault/answer/7664657?hl=en
because i'm in agreement with the grandparent comment that why is the topic subject to legal holds vs just having a meeting in person? Are in person meetings rquired to have a voice recorder present? it seems like a weird legal precedent.
None of this is particularly surprising, but it's very amusing to see the litigation go this route. It's incredible common for corporate legal to recommend purging data or communications no longer relevant, or to advise avoiding specific means of communication (like email) due to retention challenges. It's incredibly dumb to explicitly discuss avoiding leading a paper trail with respect to subjects where litigation i…
> None of this is particularly surprising I am not a vengeful type. But people need to be punished to a shocking degree until this is fixed. It should be surprising. And it should have terrible, if not horrific, consequences.
I moved from an HFT firm to Google. The attitude difference with respect to document holds was hilarious. At the HFT firm, the attitude was, "we're constantly being sued (by the SEC and others), so we treat all of our records like they're under litigation holds, just in case the SEC claims they wanted them, even the off-topic slack channels." At Google, the attitude was, "we're constantly getting sued, so we treat al…
Finance is default not trusted. If documents are missing, fraud is presumed. Tech doesn’t seem to have reached that point just yet.
It's on a high speed train heading in that direction now.
Pardon my ignorance, but why isn't Pichai allowed to have chat conversations that don't record history? Was there a case against Google already that bans this or something? And couldn't this just be circumvented by having an in-person meeting?
The complaint details the reason it was not allowed in this case, though would be normally: the topics were subject to legal holds. > Like Mr. Pichai, other key Google employees, including those in leadership roles, routinely opted to move from history-on rooms to history-off Chats to hold sensitive conversations, even though they knew they were subject to legal holds. Indeed, they did so even when discussing topics…
This is not true anymore. The judge in the case determined that the DOJ was right.
