You paraphrased it in a different way and that might be why you're confused.
Google says "the excerpts are not linked to personally identifiable information." To me that means the metadata is stripped, not that they strip anything out of the audio.
Thank you, good catch. I’ve edited my paraphrase to make it more accurate in this way.
That said, it still sounds like Google is trying to convince us that the data they capture (not just the metadata) is never linkable to personally identifiable information, which if true would genuinely ease many privacy concerns here.
As far as I know, just because data is not explicitly annotated with PII doesn’t erase the legal (and ethical) responsibilities associated with handling data that contains PII.
So even if they worded their response so it’s truthfulness is legally/technically defendable, it’s still a bit of a ‘red herring’ at least (I don’t think anyone is accusing Google of explicitly associating these audio recordings with user IDs).
Google says "the excerpts are not linked to personally identifiable information." To me that means the metadata is stripped, not that they strip anything out of the audio.