It's possible at some schools to have 89s through most of your classes which equals a B (3.0) and have a few Cs and thus have a 2.6 GPA.

He said they had his transcript from the beginning, this is definitely a bad move from Google, or the hiring process is not communicated clearly across teams.

or maybe 2.6 was 'probably ok' but his justification for it made it 'not ok'

IIRC the average Engineering GPA at the University of Michigan was around 2.9 when I was there a few years ago. 2.6 would not have been horrible, but still pretty disappointing.

Lots of classes were curved to a B or B-. With a setup like that, it's not possible for everyone to have 3.5+ GPAs...

A GPA of 2.6 at Waterloo is considered strong

You realize GPA is a relative, not absolute, metric, right (i.e., a 2.6 is considered ok for engineering students at top universities)?

> 2.6 is considered ok for engineering students at top universities

I don't know anywhere this is considered "ok". At my school my GPA was considered just "Ok" at 3.9+.

Grade inflation, look it up. If 3.9 is "OK" your class's grades have compressed to the point of meaninglessness.

I think we had ~150 CS grads, and about 15 valedictorians with perfect 4.0's.

Either your promotion is made of geniuses or as @sk5t said your GPA is indeed meaningless.