
Ask HN: Google Apps with Ad Blocking - vforgione
For someone who doesn&#x27;t appreciate having their information sucked up by a corporate machine and regurgitated as a targeted ad, is it practical to use Google products with a bevy of ad blockers and other privacy tools?<p>If I use a Pixel phone and use Google&#x27;s services (GMail, Photos, etc.) and use Firefox with ad blocking and set up a hosts file to drop connections to ad networks am I in any way _winning_ or am I just deluding myself?
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troydavis
If you’re using G Suite (formerly Google Apps For Your Domain), most services
already don’t do this. From: [https://gsuite.google.com/learn-
more/security/security-white...](https://gsuite.google.com/learn-
more/security/security-whitepaper/page-6.html)

> There is no advertising in the G Suite Core Services, and we have no plans
> to change this in the future. Google does not collect, scan or use data in G
> Suite Core Services for advertising purposes. Customer administrators can
> restrict access to Non-Core Services from the G Suite Admin console. Google
> indexes customer data to provide beneficial services, such as spam
> filtering, virus detection, spellcheck and the ability to search for emails
> and files within an individual account.

Core services includes Mail and Docs/Drive, though not Photos.

That said, you can be both not winning and also not deluding yourself, and
that seems like a fair assessment. Think of it as a revealed preference: if
you really didn’t want to make the targeted-ads-for-free-services trade, you’d
use alternatives for components where great alternatives exist (say,
FastMail). There’s nothing wrong with using Google’s products, it just means
your preference - revealed rather than stated/intended - is to accept that
trade.

