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Is the default to record all audio conversations in the office? No.

Is the default to record all chat conversations? Yes.

Then Google enacted a policy to have employees turn off the recording of chat conversations if they were going to discuss certain topics.

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I've been primarily using end to end encrypted self destructing chats for maybe 20 years at this point, especially for work stuff. Why should other people's poor data hygiene put my data at risk?

Its really simple, if you're in litigation, you are legally obligated not to destroy written records, and produce them based on discovery requests.

If you delete chat, that is destroying written records.

Isn't Google always in litigation?

Are all written records supposed to be preserved when you're in litigation, or just relevant records?

Disclosure issues, and destruction of records, are prominent issues in two UK scandals just now: the Contaminated Blookd Scandal, and the Post Office Horizon scandal.

It's only relevant records, not all records.

"your honor, none of these chats you can't see were relevant."

That's one of the arguments Google tried. Good luck.

So you've been destroying recorded information as a policy; that's fine, but the rule is essentially that if you know you are being sued and your chats are relevant, you need to take steps to stop the destruction.

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