That might be true, but that is not a good look for Google. Walker seems a bit shaken. Judge Donato is accusing him of “tap-dancing around” and trying to pass the buck.

Now the judge is asking: Why didn’t you just preserve the chats? Why did you leave it up to each individual employee to decide?

“What we did not have the ability to do immediately was to impose litigation holds that would carry across for a subset of individuals to track the various cases” Google was involved in.

The judge isn’t satisfied. “That’s not what I was asking."

"You tried," says the judge, turning away, as if giving up on getting a straight answer.