Question 1

Is Google Vault the same kind of thing as Microsoft Purview?

Accepted Answer

Functionally sibling: holds, retention, search, export over the tenant's services: and the same jurisprudence of use applies: defensible for scope and bulk, structurally limited at the edges (revision series, history-off Chat), operator-dependent for trust. Guide 52's three questions: trust, structures, downstream: choose between Vault and independent routes exactly as they choose around Purview; guide 59 examines Vault's capabilities and limits in full.

Question 2

Can deleted Gmail be recovered?

Accepted Answer

Run the layer walk: user trash within its window; Vault-held mail regardless of deletion (the hold date governs); retention-rule coverage; then the architecture: device mail caches, counterpart recipients, backup platforms. Google-specific wrinkle: labels mean "deleted from Inbox" often just means relabelled: the message may simply be else where in the mailbox. The four facts of guide 53 translate: hold status and date, retention rules, window position.

Question 3

How reliable are Google Docs revision histories as evidence?

Accepted Answer

Highly, within stated limits: platform-maintained, editor-attributed, timestamped, and effectively impossible for users to falsify retrospectively: Example 1's decisiveness is typical. The caveats are granularity (old revisions can be consolidated: the stream's resolution is stated per document), shared-credential attribution (the join, as ever) and collection route (streams survive as series only via the structural route). Collected properly, they are among the strongest drafting evidence in either ecosystem.

Question 4

The space had history off. Is the chat genuinely gone?

Accepted Answer

From the tenant, very largely yes: that is what the setting does, and Vault cannot reach what was never kept. But Example 2 is the standard answer: participants' device caches, the other or g an is at i on in external conversations, screenshots and forwards as corroboration, and the setting's own change history as potential conduct evidence. "History off" ends the tenant inquiry and starts the architecture one.

Question 5

What happens to a departed employee's My Drive files?

Accepted Answer

They ride the account: suspension preserves everything; deletion starts the 20-day restore clock, with an option at deletion to transfer Drive ownership to another user (which preserves content but rewrites provenance: the transfer is documented and stated). Shared Drive files are unaffected by member departure: the design reason disputes increasingly turn on which regime owned the file. The advice is unchanging: suspend, decide later.

Question 6

We are a Microsoft firm facing a Google-estate opponent. What do we ask first?

Accepted Answer

Three requests, all in this guide's §11: hold scope and dates plus retention rules with change history (the preservation position); the admin audit reports for the period (the diary, before its windows roll); and route-and- fidelity c on firm at i on for their collection (what their exports preserved of labels, threads and revisions). The answers map their estate and their conduct at once: and nothing in them requires you to run Workspace yourself. cflab. u k · e-disc ove r y. u k ©2026 Computer Forensics Lab Ltd ·cflab.uk ·e-discovery.uk ·info@cflab.uk ·+44 (0)20 7164 6915 Page 15 of 17

Collecting Evidence From Google Workspace