That's all fine and dandy, but what is 'weapons grade stupid' is to not only have the conversation in email, but then to use a key word like 'paper trail' to lead any investigation straight to his conversation. And in that exact email, say WHY he wants it done in-person. I mean, 'paper trail' has to be up there with 'take this offline' and 'this is sooo illegal' for phrases that serve up incriminating evidence on a silver platter to the DOJ.
A non-WGS response would have been, "Come up to my office: we'll discuss further."
Reminds me of another industry-centered town in that part of the country. How do people feel about Silicon Valley becoming the next Hollywood?
I have friends who testified for Microsoft in the DOJ trial in the nineties. Schmidt testified for the DOJ and was well-aware of what happens with corporate email.
He might be smart, but he did a very stupid thing. Whether it amounts to a slip-up or hubris, time will tell.
You can be sued over lots of things, whether or not they have merit, and keeping things verbal is one of the "standard" techniques of defending against that. In this case, were this the only document in the pile, Eric would be in a position to either not recall the conversation he had with Omid, or deny its content. Further he would argue that it is a general state of mind for a CEO that they don't want to create paper trails over anything that could be construed by a litigious opponent as evidence if misdeeds.
The problem in this case is that there is a bunch of other circumstantial evidence that makes it pretty clear that everyone on Google's EMG was on the same page with respect to this particular policy. I note however that Google has yet to settle in the class action, so they may still believe they can defend their position.
That said, the "valley" has always been a really small place with regard to hiring. If you work here for any length of time a tapestry of opinions about you will be formed and those opinions will affect to a larger or smaller degree who offers you work and who doesn't. Is that legal? I don't know. There are folks I have decided to never work with again, and people for whom I would change jobs in a heartbeat. Is my private 'blacklist' and 'whitelist' of good and bad co-workers legal? As a generic engineer? What about now that I'm a VP and perhaps these folks are trying to get a job at my company? Do you know how many people are sued each year because someone suspects (or knows) that they told a potential employer that they personally wouldn't hire them? My point is that people and employment and fuzzy criteria is a fertile ground for lawsuits, so paper trails are always bad.