As an ex-Googler ... That auto-delete policy was extremely annoying. And even if we turned it off, it only changed from a 24 hour deletion to something like 30

As an ex-Googler ... That auto-delete policy was extremely annoying. And even if we turned it off, it only changed from a 24 hour deletion to something like 30 days. The chats certainly wouldn't be kept permanently. Corporate data "retention" policies are entirely intended to avoid future legal "discovery." My understanding is that policies like Google's are considered "best practices". For example, my current employer deletes Slack messages after 90 days for the same reason. It is also extremely annoying. My current employer even deletes Google Docs after something like 180 days unless they are put into special folders.