
Ask HN: If I use GSuite does Google mine my data for their own purposes? - plg
If I pay for GSuite and I browse the web while logged on to my GSuite account using Chrome, for example, does Google mine my data&#x2F;metadata&#x2F;behavior for the purposes of advancing their business model? Or just to &quot;help deliver my services&quot;
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rpcastagna
(I'm a software engineer on Google Drive.)

The answer is no. To the point where it's actually a pain in the ass for us
because developing any ML-assisted capabilities for G Suite requires us to
only get training data from specific subsets of customers who are under
special contract conditions.

If you buy G Suite from a reseller then they might be doing shady shit but
we'd terminate their reseller account if we found out about it.

I know people like to bitch about this kinda shit on HN but honestly I and my
coworkers spend so much time on protecting our customers' data from literally
everyone -- including ourselves -- that I want the chance to bitch back about
how hard my job is.

~~~
mbrock
I wonder if this commitment is reflected in any official terms or pledges?

~~~
rpcastagna
"Google Cloud Security and Compliance Whitepaper" linked elsewhere on this
thread: [https://storage.googleapis.com/gfw-touched-accounts-
pdfs/goo...](https://storage.googleapis.com/gfw-touched-accounts-pdfs/google-
cloud-security-and-compliance-whitepaper.pdf)

Relevant bits start at page 12:

"G Suite customers own their data, not Google."

"There is _no_ advertising in the G Suite Core Services, and we have no plans
to change this in the future"

etc.

Ultimately the biggest cudgel you have to wield here is in the sales contract
you're signing, but my understanding is that the baseline privacy guarantees
are standard for all customers at the strictest level -- people actually opt
to reduce the restrictions on their data so that new features get built with
their use cases in mind (otherwise we wouldn't know what those actual use
cases were).

A _lot_ of companies use G Suite and a lot of them have very strict privacy +
security requirements. This is the same platform used by fintech companies,
healthcare companies, MegaCorps, etc.

Sort of a thing with all non-web-search Google products: I can't fathom how
people see the $5B/quarter "other revenue" line on our earnings statements and
think that just doesn't matter and somehow we have to get the "real" money
from ads. We definitely did ads-supported-consumer first and we've been doing
it the longest and it makes the most money, but how many email providers would
kill to have half of that quarter as their _annual_ revenue? G Suite, Cloud,
etc are very real businesses in their own right and that's even while being
very young and coming from a company that didn't start with any inherent
strengths in enterprise markets.

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kakaorka
I believe Google is a surveillance company, and I like to think that anything
they do has something to do with that. I would love someone to prove me wrong
though, because what they're doing is so dystopian.

~~~
jdavis703
> would love someone to prove me wrong though

The burden of proof lies on the person making claims. I'm not asserting that
your claims are wrong, but if you want people to take your statements
seriously you need to provide proof.

In order to practice what I teach, here's an article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_\(philosophy\)).

EDIT: Fixed paragraph formatting

~~~
craftyguy
I mean, it's literally no secret that Google collects user information,
contents of emails, browsing history, etc and uses it to target advertisements
to users. If you use a google product or service for more than 5 minutes, you
literally see it happening.

~~~
jdavis703
OK, I guess that depends on how you define surveillance. I think of
surveillance as having some kind of relation to the state, for example a
private investigator looking into a court matter, a company sharing
information with the government (outside of warrants), etc. If we're taking
surveillance to mean general tracking, then yes the OP's statement probably
doesn't need further evidence.

~~~
craftyguy
I think most folks associate surveillance with this definition of the word:
"continuous observation of a place, person, group, or ongoing activity in
order to gather information"

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pengo
Google will capture your data whether you're a paying customer of not. They
will tell you they capture "some data" to personalise their service and make
your life more convenient. In reality, they capture everything they can and
it's all grist to their advertising mill.

But Google is not the only company doing this. Facebook and Amazon will track
you across the internet, and even Microsoft is now adopting similar
strategies.

Your best defence is to minimise the attack surface. Own your own data by
paying for cloud storage and email. Use a browser like Brave, or Firefox with
the new privacy control turned on. Don't post anything to social media you
wouldn't be happy for the whole world to know.

~~~
pengo
If you can cope with living in a walled garden, replace all your devices with
Apple products.

~~~
jstimpfle
I find it really hard to tell if you are cynical or not :-)

Not making any statement about the current Apple, of course... which I know
next to nothing about since I've never owned any Apple devices.

~~~
danesparza
Apple makes some pretty strong claims about your privacy as a customer:

[https://www.apple.com/privacy/](https://www.apple.com/privacy/)

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lgleason
Yes, and they are known to scan it and kick people off for "inappropriate"
content under a very subjective and not equally enforced set of standards.
This is why I don't recommend Google Cloud to clients.

~~~
conductr
Do you mean they scan your files and will kick you off for running a porn
business because of the content in your slides/sheets/files. Or are you
saying, if you run a church they will kick you off for occasional porn
browsing?

Using porn as an example of possibile subjective inappropriateness

~~~
UncleMeat
It means that storing child pornography on the cloud is against the tos.

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salomaki
Yes on two levels:

1\. If you're logged into Chrome or using Google properties, they're using
your behavior along with everyone else's to see what patterns people have,
what sites are popular, which ads convert, etc. If they were to stop doing
that tracking whenever you're logged into a GSuite account, they'd publicize
that loudly and clearly as a selling point. Given that they don't, I think
it's reasonable to believe that they treat GSuite customers' behavioral data
the same as all other users'.

2\. Specifically your use/behavior of the GSuite products they will also use
to improve the GSuite products themselves (and sell more, thereby advancing
their business model). For example, if they see that nobody is using a
particular feature, they may change where it shows up or eliminate it.

What they clearly publicize that they don't do is mine the content of your
documents or put advertising inside the GSuite products themselves. But all
the behavioral data/metadata you generate will still be used alongside
everyone else's.

------
Adaptive
Page 12 [https://storage.googleapis.com/gfw-touched-accounts-
pdfs/goo...](https://storage.googleapis.com/gfw-touched-accounts-pdfs/google-
cloud-security-and-compliance-whitepaper.pdf)

~~~
Klonoar
I used to pay for GSuite and still found my content being mined. With all due
respect to Google, I find it hard to believe that they're as consistent as
they believe with filtering paid vs free accounts across the service.

I could be, and am open to being, wrong, though. I'm not Google. Just found
myself with substantially less targeted advertising once I left.

And actually that's slightly interesting - how does one determine a bug re:
being the recipient of targeted ads when you shouldn't be? Probably wording it
wrong without coffee in me, but I hadn't thought of it like that.

~~~
tehwebguy
> found my content being mined

How?

~~~
Klonoar
turc1656 (other direct reply to you) noted what I was getting at, but to
expand on it...

I'm pretty careful about what I share with various services. Facebook
(Instagram, etc) are all silo'd off to separate access points, phone is devoid
of any of them, you get the gist. The only thing I didn't mind was Google,
since I was paying for it, and it's easy to think that paying for it means
it'll work how you expect it to and your privacy is intact.

Thus I'd keep Google apps signed in to the account, and I'd keep a tab open
with Gmail all day, so short of incognito tabs, I was almost always signed
into it.

Your _email_ isn't scanned, but Google doesn't even do that for free email
accounts since..., what, 2014? Most people who decry the whole Gmail reading
emails angle don't seem to understand this. They still track you as you move
around for advertising purposes, though, and that was enough to make me just
not want a Google account.

Siloing social media probably reduced my targeted advertising by 20%, and the
absolute biggest reduction I found in my life was by getting rid of Google.
It's honestly jaw dropping how much tailored content you get shoved at you
that "waking up" from it can blow your mind (read: less depression, fomo, and
so on, which more people seem to be catching on to).

YMMV though. I don't hate advertising and think it certainly has a place in
society, and some people find it useful/fine/acceptable. Just noting my
experiences.

~~~
kbenson
> They still track you as you move around for advertising purposes, though,
> and that was enough to make me just not want a Google account.

Firefox containers solved[1] this for me. They are probably the biggest
privacy boost I've felt for a decade. I've got three separate Google
containers (private Google account and general Google properties like youtube,
and two separate Gsuite accounts), individual Facebook, Reddit and HN
containers, a separate containers for various banks I interact with, another
separate for online purchases (plus goodreads, because I don't want Amazon to
leak), and an individual Pandora one (because why not?).

1: Well, "solved" in that it's harder for them. They can still track me, but
at least now they get conflicting cookies from different types of sites but
the same IP which might confuse their metrics some. I'm aware I'm probably
just making it harder to state anything about me with too much confidence at
most.

~~~
Klonoar
Yes, but Firefox on Mac is honestly nowhere near the level of polish that
other browsers are, so I only use it for social media. My default browser is
Safari, which never sees a Google signin anymore. _shrug_

Highly recommended tho.

------
phjesusthatguy3
It looks like a lot of people went straight to "Google said they don't scan
your documents for advertising purposes" and skipped over your actual
question, which was "does Google scan everything I do in Chrome when I'm
logged in even if I pay for GSuite" and I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

------
neilsimp1
I'd be very surprised if Google _wasn 't_ doing that with your data. It's
their business model.

~~~
jakejarvis
Except when someone's paying them cold hard cash for something like G Suite,
you'd think that _should_ be enough of a business model for them...but I think
you're right to remain skeptical of that. :\

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Rjevski
Officially not.

In reality, nobody knows, and given their business model I wouldn’t be
surprised if they did anyway.

~~~
wombatpm
Based on the Googler's comment above, I think both are true. I can fully
believe that test data has to be obtained from certain sources for development
and whatnot. But once the algorithm is in production , I'm sure its sifting
though your stuff as you are browsing just like everything else.

------
tscanausa
Ill link to the official docs from Google:

[https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-
white...](https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-
whitepaper/page-6.html)

------
gxigzigxigxi
If you want an answer from someone who actually knows, consider contacting
your gsuites account rep or asking on the support forum for gsuite. It is
apparent from the other responses find their root in uninformed paranoia
rather than actual knowledge.

(I don’t actually know either, and I think it depends on what you mean by
“scan” and what program you’re worried is doing said scanning. It also depends
what you mean by “for their own benefit.”)

------
altairiumblue
Anecdotally, a couple of weeks ago I made a "budget" spreadsheet in google
sheets and since then I've been getting the same youtube ad for a money
management app, over and over again. I hadn't seen the ad before and the
spreadsheet is the only change in my behaviour on google services that I can
think of.

~~~
quickthrower2
Did you search for anything budget related?

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alphabettsy
I don’t belive they scan the contents of your documents/emails, but I do
beleive they use metadata and behavior.

I’m conflicted because part of me thinks using their paid services encourages
them to pursue a more Apple-link business model where advertising dollars are
not the end goal, but it just doesn’t seem to be their mission at all.

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xte
Your data are on their server? If yes you simply can't no and (the need of)
trust is a weakness. Since you can only trust them you are in a weak position
as a user, be confident enough than that your data's will be used is some way.

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robbystk
Of course they do. How could you be so naive?

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pbreit
No.

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yuhong
This is one of the reasons why I wrote my essay/overview, to investigate these
problems.

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jackallis
it's a FAANG world and we just live under it.

