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Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
947 points by twhb on Feb 2, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 430 comments
I received an email from Google yesterday that communicated, with much obfuscation, the following key points:

- The “Web & App Activity” setting for Google Workspace users will be ignored by Gmail, Drive, Docs, Calendar, Chat, Meet, Keep, and several other services.

- Tracking for these services will be controlled by a new user setting, “Google Workspace Search History”, which will default to on regardless of the user’s Web & App Activity setting.

- The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed.

- These changes will take effect on 2022-03-29.

Full email text: https://pastebin.com/raw/5ayJTDDp

More info from Google: https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328




Hello hello, PM for the feature checking in here. amf12's reply is quite on-point. Web and App Activity is designed to store search activity across all Google services, and we're splitting Workspace data out since it's governed by strict data handling guarantees, with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits of better search in Workspace without having to opt-into search history being tracked for all Google services.

Search history can be immensely useful for our users, since a lot of them re-run prior searches or want search experiences built on top of prior ones. Today, for the Workspace paid offering admins who choose to disable the somewhat confusingly named Web and App Activity admin console control, users in the domain have no ability to get relevant and historical search suggestions in Drive or Gmail that can help them save time.


Your reason for splitting this into two separate settings is understandable.

>> ...with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits of better search in Workspace without having to opt-into search history being tracked for all Google services.

This is unacceptable. People have already opted out or been opted out by their admin. If they want to opt back in now that the setting is more granular, they can, but this choice should not be made for them.

Let's be honest, the real reason for making this opt-out again is that you hope lots of people won't notice and you can start collecting their data. Please reconsider.


> Let's be honest, the real reason for making this opt-out again is that you hope lots of people won't notice and you can start collecting their data. Please reconsider.

I'm keen on seeing if there's any legal code or case law that addresses opting someone back in who's already opted out.

And I'm hoping there's personal culpability for the change, too. Not just corporate fines. But this is probably just wishful thinking on my part.


Verizon is now doing this. If you opt out, they add new categories of tracking and then opt you back in:

> Custom Experience is a rebrand/spinoff of Verizon Selects, which customers were automatically enrolled into when they used the Verizon Up rewards program. Verizon Selects is being rebranded Custom Experience Plus (and anyone who was previously a member of Verizon Selects automatically gets moved to the new Plus program) and the standard Custom Experience program is being branched off of it, which allows the company to track many of its customers’ data use who do not actively opt-out.

Google's move feels similar. At least do a prompt of the user if you think they would want to opt in. Don't just opt them in automatically on your own.


If enough users feel bothered by this i hope Google reconsiders.

Don't ever change a users opt-out preference, instead give them information so they can decide on their own.

But Google knows very well what happens if they do this - almost nobody will opt-in.


There really should be more personal culpability, at least on the exec team and board of directors, for things like this.

I also hope Google gets sued in Europe over this. I live in the US and work for a European company and I'm reasonably sure they're going to be super pissed off about this.


Is it possible to sue executives and project managers involved in this decision directly in civil court? I imagine quite a few have juicy enough salaries that it would be nice to take a bite at them.


The entire point of corporations is to shield liability from the people inside the corporation from civil damages.


A. Google a multi-billion dollar company does things that impact (billions?) of paying users without caring about consequences.

or

B. All those things were considered and in the end the executives though it was worth the backlash and the risk of paying a fine.


"Please reconsider" is the wrong tone. One might as well ask an abuser to "please reconsider" abuse. Closer to the point might be, "Your actions are unethical, illegal, and I will gladly join the class action that results from this."


>Please reconsider.

Isn't the point of Google's current valuation that they are stealing as much data as they can to feed their nascent AI in the hopes of spawning the best masses manipulator? Why would they reconsider their overarching business model?


Linkedin does the same thing with email subscriptions every six months. I wish it was made illegal and companies got fined for pulling this crap.


This is why I deleted my linkedin account 10+ years ago.


I encourage you, unreservedly, and without any personal malice, to fight the reality distortion field that causes people to make decisions like the above.

Users do not want this. Engineers, PMs, and executives want this. Google's 23% YoY revenue growth wants this. To Google, users who don't subject to dystopian tracking, who don't consent to Google knowing everything about them, who just want to go about their own lives while not being studied like a lab rat, or pestered to let an all-powerful force in the sky wring their lives of all digital value, are a round-off error. Google has shifted from its default modes of putting the user first, offering them services and information at their request, of being uninteresting in who or why is asking...that it has become one of the leading forces eroding user privacy, agency, and trust.

Inside of Google, the reality distortion field is intense. It doesn't feel intense, it feels rational and right. Google sees itself as an infinitely benevolent force for good in this world that occasionally makes mistakes. It literally cannot fathom what an abusive, creepy, and unfeeling machine it's become. It sees itself as being made of very moral people. It cannot understand that its enormous size, its market position, and its list of priorities have created a configuration of people that can do nothing but eat the world, and at this point it is doing so, despite what those people have in their heads.


It's fascinating to see Google and Facebook employees defending the undefensible here almost daily, using all the upbeat expressions they can muster out to obfuscate the fact that they are not accepting no from people when it comes to data collection.

One would hope that there will be an effort to shame these engineers for their role in normalizing mass surveillance, and for their shallow attempts to play down the damage they cause to society.

A year ago I've seen a Google engineer boasting here about his occasional donations to charities, while he works on ads and regularily defends his employer in public, dismissing some of the illegal activities that are taking place at Google.

I'd understand working for your own selfish reasons on something harmful to other people out of necessity, but I doubt most Google and Facebook engineers are only designing and writing the code that intrudes on our personal lives because they just could not find an engineering job at a less scummy company.


If there's one feature that I would assert almost everyone wants which requires tracking some data, its search history recommendation.


1. We’re talking about people who have already switched it off.

2. There is no need for any tracking to implement this. It can be done on the client.


1. For non paid users, it isn't turned back on. But it is turned on if you're a paying user. In these cases it's never the user who switched it off, it was the admin, so since the control is being shifted from admin to user (admin can no longer turn it off for users of workspace apps) its kind of like a brand new setting for them.

2. True but it's somewhat useful to be able to use your account on different devices and retain your history.


> 1. We’re talking about people who have already switched it off.

No, we're talking about accounts who already had it (as part of broader setting) disabled for them, in a context where the data in question can (contractually) only be used to provide the service anyhow.

> 2. There is no need for any tracking to implement this. It can be done on the client.

Pray tell me how you can do client side search history recommendation for the first query I make after logging in.


> No, we're talking about accounts who already had it (as part of broader setting) disabled for them, in a context where the data in question can (contractually) only be used to provide the service anyhow.

That doesn’t contradict that it was switched off intentionally.

> Pray tell me how you can do client side search history recommendation for the first query I make after logging in.

Logging in to what? Are you saying you want your search history synced between your browsers? If so, that’s a solved problem that doesn’t require Google to track you.


The search history in this context is Gmail and drive in app search history. This has absolutely nothing to do with your browser.


Then it’s a trivial feature that you can simply ask people if they want to enable rather than opting them in when they opted out.


The users in question never opted out, their domain admins opted out of a different feature.

And the corollary equally applies: it's a trivial feature with no privacy impact, why require opt-in. I don't want to be spammed with opt-ins every time every app I use adds a trivial new feature. I'd be clicking a dozen boxes a day.


It does have a privacy impact.


In what way?

Keep in mind all the user data collected is still under the workspace data use agreement which is very strict and disallows using the data for pretty much anything that isn't directly providing that service to that user/organization.


Easy, just store your search history in a Blockchain and pull it down every time you log in.


Why a blockchain? Or is this sarcasm?


Google turns off maps nav search history if you turn off web search history. Maps could easily switch to local to the device instead, since you usually nav with the same device over and over and could rebuild common history if you got a new device (or transfer history), but it feels like they want a carrot and stick.


Well the google PM said that before this change all their apps history were unified, and they just split off the workspace apps. But maybe you're right and the only reason it's still that way rather than split up is a business decision rather than a developmental/resource allocation decision.


Why would I want Google to store my search history? I can look at my search history just fine with my local copy on my web browser.

(Web browsers store previously visited websites)


The search history in this case isn't your browser search history, but in-app search history within gmail/drive. Your browser doesn't store that.


Which drive files I open is 100% in my web browser history.


But searches made in the drive UI are not. (and gmail history certainly is not, and actually drive files viewed in certain contexts aren't either)


> But searches made in the drive UI are not.

What? Yes they are! Browser history includes every page you navigate to, including the "search results for 'tps report'" page of a cloud storage service.


Ah you're quite right (I was expecting that the queries would be POST-like, not GET-like).

This distinction doesn't matter too much though, because having the browser be responsible for this fails in at least two ways:

1. The browser shouldn't need knowlege of how to parse every query language of every webapp you use.

2. The browser can't actually give you the results of those queries. If I search for "tps reports", the browser knows I entered that query string, but it doesn't know what the 15 results were, and so can't, for example take my prior search into account when I search for "12/17/2022" to uprank the TPS report for that date, as opposed to some other report. Nor can it even do the weaker bit and assume that since I searched TPS yesterday, when I search "reports" today, it should consider upranking tps reports.


I admire how focused you are on drive & gmail search quality. I have a lot of concerns about using user data to improve search that are larger than this specific feature or discussion. This leads me to implement strategies to reduce new data generated, such as loading URLs directly instead of accessing them from search. I’d like to conclude by conceding your approach will generate the better results, but that the best search results aren’t what I’m optimizing for.


I certainly do not want that! I want to search through the web as it is, not as some search engine imagines I would prefer it to be, based on its inevitably limited understanding of my preferences.

Smart systems which sometimes work and sometimes don't are vastly more frustrating than dumb systems which do exactly what they're told, every time.


My (non google) browser stores my history just fine.


Just to clarify this comment is sarcastic right? It gets confusing in text. (genuinely asking)


No, I wasn't being sarcastic


Ah ok! So then the other replies are valid then. Agree with others, to me this is useless. Browser handles it already if I wanted it, and I never use that anyway.


I feel sort of bad for this comment.

The reason is because the reason given is perfectly sound. “We have to split this out because of perfect reasonable reasons like laws, data retention policies, etc etc”.

And everything afterwards is pure unadulterated propaganda.

I don’t know if the commenter knows how patronizing they sound. “We did this for you because even though you’ve previously explicitly opted out, we think we know better than you and we’re doing you a favor to enhance your experience”.

Imagine going into a restaurant and saying “I really don’t enjoy a medium rare steak please make it medium well” and having the chef say “ok fine but medium rare steak is the best way to enjoy it so I made it medium rare despite what you previously explicitly told me enjoy”

I really wouldn’t expect this sort of borderline gaslighting from a company like Google. I really can’t tell how many PMs and engineers on this team either a) whole heartedly believe in this or b) have convinced themselves this is a user friendly change or c) knows that something feels off but their paycheck depends on it so let’s not fight too much about it, d) feels some reservations and have voiced up but have bills to pay so didnt rock the boat


There was this thing in Melbourne cafes for a while (and maybe still, I'm not in Melbourne any more), where you would walk in and order your usual from other cafes "a large Flat White" and the barista would go "We only make coffee in one size".

At which point I would walk out and go to another cafe. The same experience, "I want coffee in a certain way", "we know better than you and will only serve you coffee how we like to make coffee"


I spent decades in Melbourne and ordered flat whites from hundreds of cafes and not on ever had this response.

Surely this is a singular experience you had and not the commonality you're implying it to be?


There are thousands of coffee shops of various calibres, so I'm not even remotely suprised that two people could have different experiences. I definitely had it happen at more than one coffee shop. It definitely wasn't all of them, or even a majority. For example:

> 9. Market Lane Coffee: Queen Victoria Market

> The only milk baristas serve is full fat cow’s milk, the coffee only comes in one size, you have to put your own lid on your takeaway, a cappuccino or latte costs $4.80, and there is always, always a line. The seasonal blend offers a full-bodied, hazelnut-heavy cup with apple undertones.[1]

That is not the one I remember it happening at, but it serves to illustrate. The other thing that used to happen sometimes is "We only use full-fat milk". I hadn't remembered that until I tried finding a reference for the cup sizes.

[1]: https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/restaurants/the-best-coffe...


Isn't that just a case of only having on size of cup though?


I have heard that reason. It fals apart when you take your own Keep Cup (etc) and it's still a problem. The problem with having an amazing coffee culture is that you end up with a bunch of coffee shops that think they know better than the customer.

If they want to run their businesses like that, that's fine. No objection. I'm sure they'll find plenty of customers. It might even be me depending on how desperate I am. But it's accepting that it's not going to work for a segment of their potential market.

Another example is cash-only/card-only, the former of which I now find much more obnoxious. That's a decision they're allowed to take, but it removes a segment of customers (it's different to the "Google knowing better" in the original post). I will likely not go back to a place that's cash only, because I don't usually carry cash any more.

Depending on the country you can walk into an office supply store and walk out with a cheap terminal (Square, SumUp, etc) that will allow you to take payments so it's nowhere near the "6 weeks wait and a merchant bank account" that it was when card payments were in their early years. Which means it's just lazy. It's lazy and it's pushing that laziness onto your customers, who have to go to the ATM.

Disclaimer: This varies country to country. In germany it's much more common to have to pay cash, because they have some long term, anti-tracking hang-up that go back to the cold war (at least that's my understanding).


> The problem with having an amazing coffee culture is that you end up with a bunch of coffee shops that think they know better than the customer.

Is this really "knowing better"? I mean, if you want a bigger coffee, and are taking your own cup: just ask them for two, and put it in the same cup.

The card issue has another aspect you're not considering: credit card networks charge fees. There is no inherent fee to accept cash.


> “We did this for you because even though you’ve previously explicitly opted out, we think we know better than you and we’re doing you a favor to enhance your experience”

This is issue industry wide not just in google, and it is not only privacy settings, but applies to general GUI of some applications and operating systems.


> ok fine but medium rare steak is the best way to enjoy it so I made it medium rare despite what you previously explicitly told me enjoy

Well considering it’s a felony to cook or consume some steaks above medium rare I may do the same.

Kidding of course :P


Google is pulling a "Soup Nazi" on you... "The Soup Nazi": https://youtu.be/euLQOQNVzgY


Active, soon to be former user here. Constantly moving things around, to at the very least temporarily hoover data from users is wrong.

The changes going on recently mean, that I'm finally eliminating my use of the G. I've dropped paid services. I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses. I've embraced other search engines again - and they're surprisingly good enough, finally. I've suggested others do the same - and I can only assume that slowly, this will pick up.

Google has finally embraced being an evil data sponge - whether people want to hear it or not. Many of us have used your services, frequently pay for them - but want control over their use, and our data.

Stop changing the game along the way, stop making us the product.


> I've embraced other search engines again - and they're surprisingly good enough, finally.

Or perhaps Google is crap enough. I no longer find anything useful when the search term overlaps with something for sale.

Even Wikipedia search is better in that case, and I skip directly to it.


Absolutely. Google search is now my choice ONLY when I want to buy something, and it's likely to be from someone who'd advertise through google. Otherwise you've got to go a long way through the results, and then you get to just junk - pretty useless.

Google maps is just as bad - other than street names and a few "public" places, the only locations that show up seem to be those paying to appear. Given how many (most) businesses google has details on, it's obvious that maps is filtering out non-advertisers.

So google is no longer a search engine, or a maps provider - it's degraded to be a small-time "yellow-pages" advertising directory. Sad really.


I wish I could upvote this post multiple times. Google senior leadership should read this out loud at an all hands meeting.


They probably do, then give themselves a nice round of applause. They're getting rid of their (unprofitable) discerning users, and keeping all the (profitable) naive users. On average, this increases the effectiveness of their ads and decreases costs. It's a big win for Google's customers (not you).


I've run into this a lot as well. If I'm looking up a place that catches my interest, 9 times out of 10 I'm *not* interested in hotel rooms or flights there. One Firefox search bar feature that I dearly love is that I can quickly and easily override my default search engine.


I had my first DDG beats google moment yesterday

I searched for ‘low more guitar sound’ and top result was an awesome YouTube video recreating the guitar sound of Low - More (song with amazing guitar tone)

Went to my other computer that defaults to google, searched the same thing

Pages of irrelevant crap, searched for ‘low more %nameofyoutubechanbel’

Nothing

Searched for exact title of YouTube video

Nothing

Had to manually go to the YouTube channel and find the video myself


I've been using DDG for a few months for almost all my searches now. It gets me the results I want almost all the time. When I do switch to google when DDG isn't enough, google gives me SEO crap and I go back to DDG, rephrase and focus my search and get the results I want.

Why does google serve up so much irrelevant crap nowadays?


Ive tried this but Ddg just doesnt work outside of english language..


> I searched for ‘low more guitar sound’ and top result was an awesome YouTube video recreating the guitar sound of Low - More (song with amazing guitar tone)

I just tried this and the first result I got was "Why does my guitar sound low?" on Quora and the only youtube result on page one was titled "How To Fix Annoying String Buzz On Your Guitar"

The results on Google were just as useless and still arguably worse than DDG, but I was disappointed that our results should be so different considering DDG says they don't buy into the whole search bubble thing. I'd have thought they'd be more consistent


I've tried switching numerous times over the years and always found myself back at Google eventually. Played with it a today after your comment, and I'll definitely have to give it another go.


> I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses.

What are you switching to? I'm in the same situation of a couple of family groups and a couple of small businesses on GSuite and looking for alternatives.


There are several options (including my domain host) that seem very attractive. Shockingly so is iCloud. My only iCloud issue (and I have ZERO Apple products) is that I can't find a way to mount the storage on Linux. If I could do that, it's what I'll choose.

For the record, I don't think I trust Apple either - but nowadays they're clearly less evil than the big G. Heck, I'm thinking of trying out the first iPhone I'll have used since 2010. That's my level of upset.


I have yet to buy an Apple product, but Android is making me consider it. The difference for me is that Apple seems to have little or no interest in people who are not Apple customers, whereas google has just become a generalized surveillance agency. Apple's values may be a little unpleasant, but at least they have some.


For mail, calendars, and address books we have, as a family, switched to Fastmail a couple of years ago. It has been great!


I've been using Fastmail for years. Love it. Rarely a problem. Support always responds within 24 hrs if there is. Ended up having to move my calendars back to Google Workspace so they could sync with Acuity (SquareSpace) Scheduling. Really annoying that they can't provide hooks into other standard CalDAV services.


Same. This is the last straw that has led us to unanimously decide to transition all our clients paid accounts from G. Some stakeholders were already on the fence but this is what tipped the scales for everyone. Doing the same for my family (we have also been using a Workspace for our emails, photos, and calendars).

It's not OK.


I call bulls*t here. Facebook has a long history of change-the-name-of-the-setting-and-the-new-flag-defaults-to-ON as a method of changing users' settings back to what facebook would prefer. Excuses aside, it looks like the same thing from google.


I have to agree. You don’t turn on stuff for people who turned it off. The default should be off, no matter where you are moving the new setting, which is fine all by itself, if informing the user. Golden rule is that the user is in control.


> The default should be off

If you split a control into two, more granular, controls, the default should be whatever I, the user, set the original control to be.

Having the default be a more privacy protecting setting is better than the default being the best for ad tracking, but really it should be what I wanted.


> Golden rule is that the user is in control.

You've just identified that the Google Search operator is not Google's primary user, it is the advertisers that Google's entire existence is geared of appease, the search function is just how they collect our desires to feed back to their real users, the advertising industry.


That’s why I find it interesting how the original comment bends in mysterious ways to answer for what they did. It’s the dishonesty of it thats worse imo.


Look we all know how the world works so please, spare the BS.

By all means do your job, and hit your metrics. But this is just a dark pattern, which comes up with some new product boundaries so you can default these settings back to on.

There's a certain arrogance to coming into HN of all places and offering a sales explanation that it's actually in our benefit.


Please don't cross into personal attack. You don't need it to make your substantive points, and it poisons the ecosystem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...


I don’t see a personal attack here.


You have a point—maybe not really a personal attack, but still aggressive and poisonous and therefore not what we want here.


It's unfortunate that this post is being downvoted and considered a "personal attack" (debatable) as it seems to be one of if not the only comment suggesting the most likely explanation: a Google employee trying to maximize engagement / usage metrics for their feature without really thinking through the broader implications. This seems much more likely to me than a grand conspiracy to sneakily collect more peoples' data.


I also fail to see where the personal attack lies...


Your comments and the email both are written like nobody really wants tracking off, at least not if they know what’s good for them. Is that what you believe?


I think "tracking" is a bit misleading here. It's product (search) usage activity. None of the Workspace data you provide is ever used outside of Workspace, nor is it used for any other purpose than for the benefit of you and your users (we can't create machine learning models from your data to improve the experience for other customers, for example, without your prior consent), and that data is never used for ads.


But how can we trust what you say? Google is not necessarily a very trustworthy company anymore.

Case in point, the subject at hand: people who said they did not want to be tracked, now have to find a setting and say it again. That does not inspire confidence in the company, and as a proxy, it doesn't give me much hope that I can trust what you say.


Well if you don't trust them then probably don't use them, since they could save your activity no matter the state of the tracking toggle in the UI.


I try to avoid them wherever possible. There are quite a few decent alternatives for many of their core services.


You can't escape google. I've seen even government websites require code from Google's servers. Just like if you choose to never sign up for facebook account they'll still create a secret profile for you and populate with every scrap of data they can learn about you from other facebook users as well as from data purchased from data brokers. We can choose to limit our direct participation with these companies (and that's a good idea) but you don't get to choose to opt out of them.


What you can do is the following:

0. Use Firefox, not Chrome

1. Install an ad-blocker (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...)

2. Install ghostery (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/)

3. Install Cookie Auto-Delete (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...)

4. Use Google Container (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...)

Then start advocating using https://plausible.io/ over Google Analytics in your own sites where possible, and use https://search.brave.com/ or https://duckduckgo.com/ for search.

For e-mail there are many options besides gmail.


> Well if you don't trust them then probably don't use them [...]

Sure, easy to say…

GAFA is everywhere, and most people can't escape them. For example: there are a lot of websites that allow register only by FB / Google account.


"I think "tracking" is a bit misleading here." And I think you are playing a very glib game of apologia.

The benefits are not misunderstood, but the ramifications of being held by a company that is getting progressively more oblique and whose actions more obfuscated by marketing speak and sleight of hand PR don't make the ROI better for 'the actual product' when put under scrutiny.


> None of the Workspace data you provide is ever used outside of Workspace, nor is it used for any other purpose than for the benefit of you and your users

Apologies, but this line is so formulaic it just triggers PTSD for me. In five quarters, management and TLs turn over and suddenly someone plugs this hose into that one, sometimes by accident, but usually deliberately. It will all end up in the giant Google smorgasbord, parts of it draped with a fig leaf that calls it "anonymous" and offered up as a data source to be raided by dozens of internal Google services to feed on.

> we can't create machine learning models from your data to improve the experience for other customers, for example, without your prior consent

Somehow "anonymized" data is constantly up for grabs, without consent required. As a PM you should have interacted with legal by now, and if it hasn't dawned on you yet, the organization will eventually do whatever it deems is not explicitly illegal or is within an acceptable envelope of risk. "Anonymized" is a particularly import legal blessing, however technically inadequate the actual process turns out to be.

You are in a particularly difficult position to be responsible for this, so I don't envy you, and don't take my comments as a personal attack. But yeah, we've heard all these lines before.


You challenged the tone of the question, but you didn't attempt to answer it. Do you believe that nobody in their right mind would want this functionality turned off?


I'm relying on search history in my Google Workspace account every single day. It's very convenient and I have a feeling most people would agree with that.

What is a double-edged sword is how this history is being used.

If it's just about offering search history for each individual user, then it's not a privacy issue and strictly an improvement in convenience. Turning it on offers the convenience, turning it off, removes it.

This is of course different if this history is used for other profiling and for ad sales, but we just learned that the data is not used this way. Now we can either trust them that this is true, or we don't.

But if we don't, what good is a setting then because if we don't trust them to begin with, why would we trust them that disabling the feature also disables tracking?

So tell me: Why do you believe that anybody in their right mind would want this functionality turned off?


This is the classic "my use case is the only use case and anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid" response.

> Why do you believe that anybody in their right mind would want this functionality turned off?

Because they want to. We don't need to give you a reason. (I know you're not GP)

I keep browsing history in Firefox turned off. Not out of privacy concerns or anything like that - it's not leaving my computer and nobody else inspects what sites I've been visiting - but just because I don't like having it. If I find something useful I bookmark it.

I do the same in Drive and Gmail. Because I just don't like having the history suggestions pop up when I'm trying to search. It's annoying and obnoxious and frankly quite useless IMO. I can type the query again.


I have a use case for turning it off:

I'm in the middle of trying to create a taxonomy of our unwieldly internal documentation (which exists, to my despair, mostly in Google Workspace Apps). Part of this is recreating how other employees find and access things, including search.

And oftentimes when I'm searching in this capacity, I'm looking specifically for documents that are hard to find or that I've never had to touch before. My history is not only not helpful, I don't want it on because I don't want it influencing my thinking or searching.


Thanks for sharing, that's a very cool use case.


I don't need nor want search history. If search works then it works. If I search for a term I now believe whatever settings I have will be ignored and I can expect ads related to that term to follow me around.

My kid did a single search and play for a Taylor Swift song on my phone and now she shadows me all across the internet.

I understand this is slightly different as this is in "workspace" but I now assume that is irrelevant.


> I'm relying on search history in my Google Workspace account every single day.

What for? I fail to see the convenience of it at all. If I'm searching for something I was already searching for, my browser will already prompt me with suggestion to fill the phrase for me based on local history which is synchronized between my devices on my terms - which isn't all that useful anyway since I already know what I'm looking for!


“…(we can't create machine learning models from your data to improve the experience for other customers, for example, without your prior consent..”

Which if added as a new privacy setting to workspaces later on would seem to imply that this change of removing the org wide opt-out is really how Google could build the right conditions necessary to get users to “opt-in” when they really have not expressed any interest in doing so while making it a large enough task for admins to fail to achieve 100% enforcement of the organization’s actual desired configuration state… and hides the real intent of the change.

Sorry but “we are opting all your users into this and removing your ability to stop us” is an odd change that is being driven by something other than the feedback org admins. I have a hard time believing that normal users will see enough of an improvement to warrant even mentioning their email search to their boss but do find it probable that admins will mention being forcibly overruled by Google to others that help influence renewal… just seems like something else is the driver and the end goal.

imo believing that this change is being driven by good intent wouldn’t be so difficult if the change to make workplace privacy settings a user-only controlled setting if it inherited the current organization stance. Some users would enable it and if it really does improve the user experience so much then others will adopt it when they see it’s effects in action or get the “well I don’t have that problem” comment from a coworker(this is how Google search, Chrome and Gmail got to their levels of adoption after all). As of right now though it sounds like all the other messaging that we have to put up with which after awhile is to take as anything other than “you are trying to steal something from me”.

At least it’s not a setting that can only be saved in the browser’s local storage and not at the account level like so many other annoying things that get pushed(looking at you YouTube).


... just like the strong privacy guarantees on Yahoo Mail, before Yahoo ran into financial hard times?


ok so you havent yet found a way to monetise this specific data yet.

But when you do its there ready and waiting.

I find it staggering how normalised privacy abuse has become with big tech.


> I think "tracking" is a bit misleading here.

I think it's misleading for other reasons. Namely, I can't be 100% sure that if I turn it off, I won't be tracked - or if you just stop display the tracking data you gather anyway.


> None of the Workspace data you provide is ever used outside of Workspace, nor is it used for any other purpose than for the benefit of you and your users

As recent court finding revealed this is most likely a lie, and even Googlers themselves don't know how to turn off pervasive tracking across apps.

If that setting was off it must remain off even if you "change product boundaries". Is this such a hard concept to understand?


> As recent court finding revealed this is most likely a lie

You can of course link to this court finding, right?


Honest questions:

When you say you cant use the data to create machine learning models, is that you talking about this (workspace) use-case, or is that a principle that Google uses in general?

How does one give consent? Is it you have to voluntarily go into the settings and turn that feature on? Or is it agreeing to a pop-up ToS agreement?

And in general for features where doing an ML model isn't necessary for basic benefit to the user, are those consent options separate?


> None of the Workspace data you provide is ever used outside of Workspace, nor is it used for any other purpose than for the benefit of you and your users (...) that data is never used for ads.

This is a blatant lie. Google will share this data with law enforcement, also on request by evil and/or totalitarian regimes.

---------

And even for use within a Google:

It is as believable as FB promising to not use 2FA for other purposes.

And malicious tracking of users who explicitly demanded to stop doing this is just another proof that noone should trust it.

It is likely that Google sooner or later WILL use search history for own purposes.

I am not even really trusting that Google is not saving my location in real-time despite that I switched this off.


Please make your substantive points without name-calling and personal attacks. We don't need them, and they poison the ecosystem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...


Sorry, I will try to handle it better.

Which parts are a problem? Would following substitutions be enough to fix the problem? (I cannot edit it anymore, checking for future)

"This is a blatant lie." -> "This is clearly untrue."

"malicious tracking of users who explicitly demanded to stop doing this" - drop "malicious"

I think that "evil and/or totalitarian regimes" is OK there.


> Google will share this data with law enforcement, also on request by evil and/or totalitarian regimes.

This is true of one's employer in general, no? "this data" is theoretically all related to one's work.*

If a gov't approached your employer and asked for whatever they have on file, they could/would be compelled to provide it.

* My spouse has done employment law in the past and likes to remind me _never_ to use work email for personal matters because the can and _will_ pull up a log of my activity should the need ever arise.


> If a gov't approached your employer and asked for whatever they have on file

Which is why people don't want Google to keep it on file.


> This is true of one's employer in general, no? "this data" is theoretically all related to one's work.*

(1) some companies simply to not start storing data that users explicitly requested to stop collecting (so it cannot be leaked)

(2) some companies are not operating for example in China so there is lower risk of forwarding your data to their government

(3) some companies operate in places where police/intelligence agencies at least pretend to not have direct access to private data without order from a proper court. Not some "allow all" like USA has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...


Haha. This is so common with Big Tech. "Are you sure you want to turn off sending us more free user data?" Gosh, why would anyone want to do that.

Somewhere between paternalism and conniving. For those working at Big Tech it seems there can be no such thing as a conflict of interest between the company and a user (ad target).

Google workers spend their time devising ways to collect more user data. If some users spend their time devising ways to minimise the data they are sharing, how can the company's interests and the user's interests be aligned. They cannot. Google workers can try to convince users that there no harm in sharing more data with Google, even claiming it will benefit them to do so. They are basically downplaying the user's interests. There is no negotiation. Google will never contemplate the notion of collecting less data.


If you’re worried about “tracking”, you probably should have moved off Google Workspace before this change. “I’ll hand all my emails and files to you in plain text, but hey, why are you storing my access patterns (and telling me about it)?” is such a weird concern.


Most people don't choose to use Google Workspace. Some organization they have a relationship with (usually their employer) chooses for them.

After that they can attempt to avoid any additional tracking on top of the necessary one that comes with the choice someone else made for them.


One concern does not necessarily negate the other, hence why they exist as different permissions.


The data actually backs this up... Autocomplete of searches for example is used for the vast majority of searches, and users who have it turned off complain they can't locate documents they've just saved (because they don't remember the location they saved them, and it doesn't list recently saved documents in the search dropdown).


I think you're getting a lot of shit from everyone who have an axe to grind against Google. They're not necessarily wrong, but I also think your mistake is not only to sneakily re-enable a previous off setting set by users, but rather your definition of "immensely useful".

Yes, we do re-run prior searches, but they're not "immensely useful" because you have no feedback if we found what we were looking for or not. Using basic trigger detection like clicks, timings or back button is not enough, as I could have been sent into a rabbit hole that wasn't what I was looking for.

So, before you work on search history collection, you should probably focus on getting these search result relevant. Today, they're mostly garbage.

I also believe that your mission is not incompatible with everyone's feeling about data collection. Maybe a _simple_ approach would benefit both ?


How can search results within your Google Workspace be “mostly garbage?” Unless maybe your work emails and corporate documents are mostly garbage?


Unless I'm mistaken, your Google Workspace also include your personal Gmail account, because, you know, it's a "Workspace".

Back to your point, let's keeps the mailbox example. I currently have 7470 unread notification emails from github in a folder in my work inbox. Let's say I was looking for some team invite email from a few months ago. Unless I remember the team, the date or the wording in github's email, everything I'll get will basically under a ton of gargabe email about comments people made in PRs. It's quite useless to remind me of previous search queries if they didn't get the feedback when I found the email I was looking for. Moreover, even if they managed to find back the team invite in that pile, have validated my goal and saved the query<=>result association, I went there for a specific purpose that may/should be completed by now. Giving useless hints is worse than giving me nothing.


The search engine can be garbage. Perhaps surprisingly, Google's own internal search engine was pretty trash for many years.


>sneakily re-enable a previous off setting set by users

How is sending everyone an email about it being "sneaky"?


Because not everyone will read or understand the email.

Because they sent the email months before users can adjust the new setting to match their old setting, placing a burden to remember on the user.

Because they didn't default the new value to the existing value.


In summary, no one trusts your employer any more no matter what they say.

> Search history can be immensely useful for our users

See the various comments spread across all HN articles stating that Google Search has become useless.


Is that true for Google Workspace search?


See the "no one trusts" section :)


Search for Drive has long been garbage.


Search for Drive is mind bogglingly bad. How...I can't understand it. Is it really because Google can't track me from it so they just don't care?


That's actually mostly reasonable, but then why default on instead of either keeping the closest existing setting or asking?


Great question. The premise here is that search is an integral part of the product experience of using Google Workspace. We don't offer controls that separate each piece of functionality within Workspace products. The reason there _is_ one governing both Workspace and non-Workspace data (the current Web and App Activity setting) is mostly historical in nature, and the fact that there are two existing controls (one for the admin, one for the user) means the vast majority of users don't even have the chance to try the feature out to figure out if it's useful for them. Hence the default on. But as noted in the email we'll be very transparent to users telling them that the setting is on, and it's also why this email went out 60 days prior to the change, as advance notice.

That being said, there's an important note that wasn't communicated in the email since it was sent to (paid offering) admins: consumer (non-paid) users who have Web and App Activity disabled will have their Workspace search history setting _also_ disabled as part of the migration. That's because we recognize a user who has turned Web and App Activity off explicitly likely won't feel the need to benefit from Workspace search history either.


> The premise here is that search is an integral part of the product experience of using Google Workspace. We don't offer controls that separate each piece of functionality within Workspace products. The reason there _is_ one governing both Workspace and non-Workspace data (the current Web and App Activity setting) is mostly historical in nature, and the fact that there are two existing controls (one for the admin, one for the user) means the vast majority of users don't even have the chance to try the feature out to figure out if it's useful for them.

That's a very elaborate way to say "because we don't want to".


I disagree. I think the point is reasonable. I personally find it useful to refer to my past searches/activity, especially in a professional context, and it would be unintuitive to me if such a feature was turned off by default.


People are just asking to have it off if they currently have the related setting off.


They answer it fairly clearly

It is off if the related setting is currently off if you're a non paid user. However if you're a paid user it is currently on.


That just describes WHAT the behavior is more precisely.

That’s not an answer as to WHY the behavior is that way.


What about... <<asking the user>>?

Shocking, right?


> Great question. The premise here is that search is an integral part of the product experience (...)

I remember, as a youngster, a Google advertisement that was in the form of a math quizz. One of the questions was about how many colors are needed to paint the sides of an icosahedron. The next question was: "which colors would you choose? Why?" I was utterly fascinated by the, so far unknown, company that wrote this funny ad that appealed so personally to me!

Twenty years later, the mouth of Google uses wooden language with terms like "product experience". This is not only useless, but also sad and stupid. Damn, Google, what the hell happened to you? Your ass used to be beautiful!


Actually, I always thought that puzzles were a poor recruiting tool. But now that he explained the problem, with all it's complexities and stakes, I kind of see the relevance.

Managing an application for 4B ppl is not something to sneeze at. There's a lot of different user profiles involved, and it's difficult to keep all of them happy.


Your complaint is that Google is focused on such "useless things" as improving search results based on your prior searches and not on cutesy ads...?


happy to hear that you found corporate marketing to be moving. unimpressed by disrespectful and nonconstructive talking over of someone right in front of them.


> unimpressed by disrespectful and nonconstructive talking over of someone right in front of them.

What are you, the etiquette police?


"Talking over" is something that just doesn't apply to one reply on an asynchronous threaded forum.


does it detract from op's point and instead attempt to steer the conversation somewhere else? (which, incidentally, is also derogatory?)

when people behave that way in live conversations, i'm equally unimpressed.


The harm to a live conversation of talking over someone is clear. There is no harm here, only a digression that can be ignored or not as participants wish. The OP had as much time and space to make their case. Again, threaded forums are not live, linear conversations, and have different characteristics for what is healthy and useful. Replies, even contradictory ones, are not interruptions. There is not one conversation going on, but many, and the conversation cannot be steered unilaterally without agreement from others to not engage in the original conversation.

In general, there is nothing wrong with detracting from someone's point (though there can be in specific instances). The point may be ridiculous and need detracting!

There is also nothing wrong with being derogatory when appropriate. Some speech is indeed bad and should be called out -- were you not doing just that? (Though I, of course disagree that the speech you were objecting was in any way bad).


so there's talking over in the sense of literal interruptions and talking over in the sense of belittlement.

google might be a giant corporation these days, but even so, it's pretty ridiculous to belittle their reps in their own threads.

as i said before, i've seen this behavior in person before (with no interruptions used in delivery, no less!) and i've seen it online. in all cases it's impressive, but not in a good way.


> …means the vast majority of users don't even have the chance to try the feature out to figure out if it's useful for them. Hence the default on.

This seems reasonable for new customers, maybe? but for existing customers this is pretty heavy handed.

I get that you want users to experience the benefits of this feature, but I personally would prefer to be informed of the feature and its value, and guided to opt in. I’d prefer to make that choice. Especially considering the potential downsides of accidentally preserving all of one’s search history.


> Great question.

Just because your company has a product named Android, doesn't mean you _need_ to talk like one, you know.

> That being said, there's an important note that wasn't communicated in the email since it was sent to (paid offering) admins: consumer (non-paid) users who have Web and App Activity disabled will have their Workspace search history setting _also_ disabled as part of the migration. That's because we recognize a user who has turned Web and App Activity off explicitly likely won't feel the need to benefit from Workspace search history either

This is actually (at a first read) GOOD news for individuals' privacy, and you bury it like this? I know there many be a bonus or two on the line here, but what the hell, you almost didn't get the message across. Please communicate like humans, at least as long as you still have humans as an audience.


> it's also why this email went out 60 days prior to the change

Do users have the ability to disable the setting when they receive the first e-mail, or do they have to wait until the setting is enabled then go back and disable it?

Are the users being notified, or just the admins? (The e-mail in the pastebin sounds like it went only to admins).

Will users be reminded when the setting changed, or is that left to the admin/do they have to remember that and disable it once the change happened?


- The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed.

Why is this? The company should have control over how employees use the company assets.


Because the number of companies that disable this company wide is large enough that google believes that by muddying the waters like this employees will give them the loophole they need to get back at that data.

The proper way to do this is:

Admin level:

- default to off

- options

  - enable

  - disable 

  - allow the user to set this

    - default to off

    - default to on


Admins are tech savvy so they could protect their users' privacy with 1 toggle.

Obviously bad for business when 90% of your revenue is from ads.


> means the vast majority of users don't even have the chance to try the feature out to figure out if it's useful for them.

Then make a case for them to turn it on, don’t use a dark pattern.


I don't wanna ruin the conversation here but:

> Great question

This is exactly how politicians (or whoever is doing something nasty) will start the answer on sensitive question. Shady business.


Punishing someone for saying 'great question' is getting into 'have you stopped beating your wife' territory. Not ok on HN.

Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? Note these guidelines:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."

Some background on why this is particularly important in this sort of thread:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...


I agree, the tone of the answer is very 'pretending to be user firendly while doing what is good for us', I cannot trust it. Not to mention the marketing logic of 'forcing users to try out new features', like if it was a positive thing not negative. Quite user hostile tone it is in my view.


Google has pioneered "forcing users to try out new features" ever since they invented forced software updates. That's not new.


> This is exactly how politicians (or whoever is doing something nasty) will start the answer on sensitive question.

That’s also true of most people who aren’t doing something nasty.


Maybe, but still

  P(doing something nasty | "Great question") > P(doing something nasty)


Not always but definitely here. I'm sure they know exactly what they are doing... it's like Microsoft changing the default search engine to Bing with their updates.


I agree. It's very jarring to me, coming across as insincere and faux-friendly. The sort of thing Mark Zuckerberg says in every product PR vid.

Another content here says that they'd say "great question" genuinely, which I don't doubt. And that's the problem, fakers have hijacked such phrases and mannerisms.

I also suspect it's a mannerism that's more common in some nations than others. In the US, conversations often seem overly polite to me e.g. the infamous "have a nice day", particularly in corporate settings. There's nothing exactly _wrong_ with that, it just comes across to me as insincere sometimes. I'd rather have an honest conversation, which can of course still be polite, while avoiding apparent insincerity. Cultural differences are subtle and profound! :)

Hmm.... thinking aloud... I don't speak Japanese, but if I could, I wonder if I'd find their famously uber-polite business-speak mannerisms jarring too?


It's also how someone might respond to any question if unexpected, or if they are trying to get through a meeting with the public that they have to do as part of their job but it is the part of the job they are less than comfortable with - put on an energetic happy-go-lucky public persona and plow through that with some Great Questions! and Wow, I'm glad you asked that! End up seeming a bit manic but at least they get through it.

It's also how people will answer bad or a bit silly questions, and then try to turn it into a great question by rooting around in it and pulling something great out so as not to hurt people's feelings. Because of the whole there are no stupid questions thing. (just listing other reasons why people answer with Great Question, not insinuating anything here)

It is also how someone might be expected to reply to a Great Question.


That's pretty standard phrasing for "you've hit on something i've also thought a lot about". I say it all the time, usually with pleasure, because it means the opportunity to share something I find interesting or feel confident in an answer on.

You are drawing the product manager for this website feature(!) up to be some sort of corrupt politician or big tech conspiracy mastermind. Really absurd.


There’s built in asymmetry here in that we talk to him as mostly anonymous individuals but he needs to respond as a company representative, so I think it’s understandable it would come across like that.


Attack a person argument, not the way they speak. The person is saying a lot of "shady shit" and focusing on great question is a great way of making sure there are no answers.


[flagged]


I assume you mean that as an attack. Personal attacks will get you banned here.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.


Hi,

thanks for jumping into the room to answer questions.

Personally I am not a fan of this idea. But that is currently not my point.

Sitting in Germany, I have not received this mail (I am a workspace admin for my private stuff and a workspace user for my employer). So maybe we are exempt. Not sure.

But - as a user for a workspace account that is being managed by our parent company in the US, I am wary of this change. In Germany some employees are represented by works councils.

Changes such as these could fall under the works councils' right of co-determination and should/could therefore not be rolled out so easily and promptly across the board for all users. At least not for employees who are represented by works councils.

Have you put into place the possibility for admins to exempt specific user groups from these default on setting?


> or want search experiences built on top of prior ones

Refining a search I just did does not require storing a complete search history.


Oh it certainly doesn't require a complete search history. That's why Workspace search history will have 18-months retention by default (which is aligned with Google's policy in general) that you can change down to 3 months if you so choose (and if your Web and App Activity setting has retention set to 3 months, we'll also automatically carry that forward to Workspace search history). You can always turn the setting off.

But, being able to better help users find recent files or emails does require storing _a_ history, which we can't do if the setting is off.


Wow. I'm genuinely struggling not to respond with something aggressive and mean, just because of how calloused your lack of interest in preserving the privacy of others is. This is a bad feature that should not be turned on by default.

You're effectively enabling the ease of search warrants of journalists and activists' search history, where they think this sort of thing is turned off. It's fucking shameful.

Look at the retention schedules of any government agency and you'll see that 18 months is an eternity, and that's for information in the public domain.


It's search history in Workspace, which is data Google already has associated with you and your organization. The difference between retention of Workspace and general Google search history is huge. If you are worried about your searches in Workspace being cached you should probably not be using Workspace for that data.


You don’t always have a choice.


This is pure apologetics.


No, it is pure logic. I moved my presence off of Google services because of privacy concerns. I am not being an apologist at all.

The point is that if you are hosting your data on Google services this setting makes little difference to your privacy footprint.


...I understand what you're saying and there's no dispute in the fact that people shouldn't use these services knowing the privacy concerns. But like another poster said, some people just don't have a choice here. Many non-profits, activist groups, and journalists use google workspaces as part of their core.

This change is dishonest and gives little notice to people who have no choice in using these services for their work.


PR and damage control isn't effective if the employee in charge is like "oh shit dudes our company screwed up!"

I think any google employee that comes in here and starts agreeing with the complaints would quickly find themselves out of a massively overpaid job the next day.


[flagged]


Loads of valid issues mentioned around here describing concerns with users being tracked. Not really reactive when misuse and abuse of tracking data is so insanely common.


[flagged]


Can you please clarify what you mean and why you think this?

Whether from a lack of experience with how these things can go badly, or from a lack of good faith in trying to understand others' concerns, it sounds like you simply don't understand why people would have issues with this. But you haven't clarified what your comments that, from my perspective, appear to be even more reactionary than the people you're accusing of being reactionary.


Let's start with your earlier comments.

> This is a bad feature that should not be turned on by default.

Opine. Stating it matter-of-factly doesn't make it fact.

> You're effectively enabling the ease of search warrants of journalists and activists' search history

Here you pull the "think of the children!" card. All those poor journalists and activists using Workspaces. Your response is to bring up politically vulnerable outlier groups and parade them around to satisfy your own need to express moral outrage.

> it sounds like you simply don't understand why people would have issues with this

I don't understand why people want to be outraged for the sake of being outraged. It's becoming exhausting.


I bring up that group because I'm a part of that group and work with people who have been targeted with subpoenas for simply investigating a company. This is something that effects me personally and the work I do that's deeply intended to help and inform the public. That you don't think protecting that group is a critically important thing for everyone is very telling.

What's exhausting is having to keep up to date with how to continue turning off these awful "features" and arguing about how we don't want these features for the billionth time.


> that you don't think protecting that group is a critically important thing for everyone is very telling.

Again you take the worst-case interpretation, with a dash of ad hominem, to help you climb that moral high ground you seem fond of.

> about how we don't want these features

So you speak for the whole of Google's customer base?


You clearly have no intent on trying to understand why people have issues with this, so I'm done here.

Best, friend.


I don't mean to judge your argument, but Google is well-known to be part of the USA military industrial complex by now, and to be very friendly with the Chinese government. If you're a journalist investigating anything else than sports competitions results, you may want to consider (for your personal safety) never to use services by such companies. When i say such, i do mean other companies close to the US gov (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft), but i do mean also other companies close to other governments (Qwant/Orange/etc in France).

If you work at Google, and think you're doing something good for humanity, please take a step back, look yourself in the mirror, and consider doing any other job instead. Arguably, even becoming a mercenary would have less negative impact overall than working for Google, because Google is not responsible for killing a few people but rather for bringing technological armaments (surveillance/AI/hosting) to governments and corporations killing millions.

For the survival of humankind and millions of other species, we need to dismantle all corporations and governments before they're done destroying earth and its ecosystems.


Why would you not default to off and let users make a conscious decision, especially if they had turned it off previously? Because this sounds like making excuses to be honest and the usefulness is irrelevant if I do not like to share data.


Feedback: a) I would prefer to be able to globally opt out of all tracking. b) If you want to make it easy for me to start with a saved search, then add a saved search feature so I have control of it. c) Google really needs to look at the number of rage inducing features that are being released. I've been hit with two in the past 24 hours: This one and I can't dial a phone number using numbers (i.e. saying the number "one two three") in Google Assistant without putting the contact in my contact book. I can only conclude that Google wants my social graph (do not want Google to have that).

Something is really wrong at Google right now. I feel like my best friend is making a drunken pass at my wife or something.


This is completely unacceptable and adds further fuel for me to remove the last few remnants I have of Google in my life.

Wanting to make more fine grained permissions is fine. But if you are going to do so you must respect the wishes of anyone who previously disabled them and set the new one to disabled if the previous one it was part of is.

Or better yet just disable it all by default, but we all know Google will never do this. Adding new permissions and automatically opting people into things they previously disabled is why data harvesting companies like Google have lost all trust.


Respect the user.

Respect the opportunity.

Neither are being done here. An email explaining the setting is one thing. Enabling the setting for the users is blatant disrespect. You and your team of PMs are destroying Google's opportunities with our users by forcing changes like this and pushing them over the edge.


I applaud your courage for posting here given the level of animosity in the room.

I think this change is good. It seems to take away the decision from the admin and put it solely in the hand of the user which is great.

More granular user control is also good (although that UI for deciding what gets recorded is getting messy).

Default ON is reasonable imo. Especially given that the data is only used to improve the product. In my experience CTR on autosuggestions is huge, hopefully this will improve workspace experience for quite a few people.


Default ON when it is known a user has previously opted out is not reasonable.


> I applaud your courage for posting here given the level of animosity in the room.

You don't need courage if you simply don't care, as evident from the responses.


Default it to whatever the user’s google-wide activity settings are. Let admins disable it for the whole org.


PM person, any chance of having a word with those who decided to charge the free gsuite plan users? I think I gave you over 10 years of free testing. I know I've had it good for for many years but I run my family email on it and it is now going to cost me lots or be an ass ache moving to an alternative.


It is amazing that you still have positive karma.


I have not downvoted it as I see it as a nice example of why Google should be receiving fines in billions of euro.


Then explain the reasoning and ask for the permission.

Opting in what was previously explicitly opted out without asking for an affirmative should be illegal.

I plan on complaining to the FTC.


Will this be different for European users because of GDPR (default on that is, the splitting sounds like it would be a GDPR win), if not what are the arguments for it being GDPR compliant?

What happens to data of searches of users that were in a Workspace and no longer are, by being fired or by no longer paying for the service themselves? What happens if they move to a new organization?


Presumably just like all your corporate Slack or Teams chat history, or your emails, the things you did on company time remain the property of the company you're employed by.


Not always the case. At the European company I work there are many rules and regs on who can legally access employees email, depending on the country of the employee. Luxembourg and the Netherlands can be really tricky for example and they are not the only ones.

It's not automatically solely owned by the company.


I'm sure it's not, and that's quite interesting, but I was speaking in the context of GDPR.


presumably, but I was consulting recently at a company that had a Workspace and I felt that

1. Google seems to want to put me into that workspace whenever I go to chrome and login despite not being at the company anymore.

2. I saw some search results in normal gmail / google search and vice versa that made me suspect there could be data shared between the workspace searches and my non workspace searches. Which would make some sense because I, like many people, don't zealously make sure work searches are never done when logged in to my private account. Example of search results improved - searched privately chose stackoverflow down page, searched workspace some days later, stackoverflow answer first result (not scientific, maybe I improved my search second time to get the stackoverflow result I was looking for) I noticed it and thought, huh, probably they merge this stuff.

So what I mean is does this happen:

Search private - switch workplace account - private searches enrich relevance of results in workplace account search - search workplace - switch to private - workplace searches enrich relevance of results in private account - quit job, start new job without company account all searches in private, quit job - start job with company account - private search history enrich relevance of results in workplace account search.

So sure, presumably not, but I'm not sure that we should presume without also confirming.


I'm kinda amazed that you thought this reply will somehow help instead of making it worse. Google having no respect to user choices is hardly surprising, but putting it so directly into words by feature's PM managed to raise my eyebrows a bit.


Hallo dear PM.

I’m glad that you confirmed that you don’t care about your paying users anymore. Of course you will change their settings since you know better they want to be tracked even if they say they don’t.

I was under impression that, being a paid customer, I would not be a product and you would not try to scam me into being a data source for you. Looks like I was wrong and this move is the last straw that will kick me out of Google as soon as I’m done with transition. You lost my money and my goodwill. I will never ever use any Google service, nor will companies where I work or consult.

Looking forward to a Google free world.


This is quite disheartening to me. Do changes like this ever get tested with focus groups before getting rolled out? I can’t think of anyone who would be ok with this change.


You need consent from the users - how did this pass compliance?


Whenever Google does something awful a product manager comes in here and tries to justify it. We get that there's business reasons why you'd do this, but it's still deeply unethical.

The fact that we can't disable this feature for our workspace is also pretty messed up. Yes disabling the feature could remove some functionality- but that's a choice the users should make.


It seems like you can disable it, it'll just be a different button.


> - The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed.

You can't disable it on a workspace level, each user has to do it individually now.


That kind of makes sense. I think the idea is that similar to how your admin doesn't have the ability to control your color scheme or accessibility settings, it's more of a personal usage feature rather than organizational one.


Really off topic, but a feature suggestion: twice I have signed up for GSuite and moved my domain there, only to quit because there is no way to use the books, movies, etc. that I bought using my free gmail account. Switching accounts is a nuisance. It would be great if there were a share option between accounts if they were tied to the same phone number.


I 100% understand your reasoning but you, as PM, need to understand that you are not alone in the room: there is a huge gorilla in the room. Office 365. Did you consider how this might be used by Office 365 sales people to convince exiting users to migrate to Office 365? Do you really think their sales and marketing is not updating their notes with this?


> Search history can be immensely useful for our users

This is imminently true, but the real context here is maybe more of a Freudian slip, and perhaps forgotten by some people.

Remember kids: Google's "users" are the people buying ad spots. People looking at *.google.com are just the eyeballs they charge to get access to.


If you truly believe what you say, the solution is obvious: commit to letting users store history only on their own device, with no syncing. Not even to other devices, which I don't need 99% of the time.

Local storage exists, let me use it. Otherwise the only thing you are committed to is never giving users autonomy.


> with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits

Nope.

What you are doing is illegitimate spying on people. People who managed to find obfuscated setting and explicitly requested to stop logging private data.

I hope that this action will result in yet another fine for Google, this time measured in billions of euro.


Workspace without having to opt-into search history being tracked for all Google services.

What's going on lately? First Google Maps refusing to navigate unless the user consents to Google using their phone to wardrive and now this? Can it really be coincidence?


The default for any data collection no matter what it is for, should be OFF.

End of discussion.


That's why I don't understand GPC (https://globalprivacycontrol.org/). GPC setting is for opt-out, without GPC header it's treating like opt-in.

> Now you can exercise your legal privacy rights in one step via Global Privacy Control (GPC), required under the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) and Europe’s Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

I don't think this is consistent with GDPR. GDPR require opt-out by default - no data can be sent without person consent.


> GDPR require opt-out by default

You probably meant to write either "optED-out by default" or "opt-in default", right?


Google used to be a pretty respected brand in tech spaces, didn't it?


I don't want to be rude, but if you're going to treat us like idiots, keep your bs propaganda to yourself.

Sometimes I wonder if people like you really believe their own lies to sleep better at night.


You know the right thing to do is for Workspace to honour the user's choice for all services, and the European Commission does too. This could end with a huge fine for Google.


Thanks for confirming that Google is no longer run by the same people I trusted (at least, somewhat more than I do now) over a decade ago.

I encourage everyone to make the leap to DDG or some other search engine that doesn't just treat you as a data cow to be milked for your precious, precious "insights."

Even GMail is no longer an attractive proposition - the risk of being locked out (perhaps, even automatically!) of an account that serves as your primary mode of recovery / identification to other websites, with little to no chance of getting an actual human on the line to address your issue, is too great. I would rather not have my finances and other important accounts be subject to the whims of the big algorithm in the clouds.


What do you use in replacement for GMail?


I recently moved to Yandex 360. We previously had DNS, mail etc. on Google until an outage[0] occured. The outage was the classical story of "billing error in related Play Store (!) account nuked entire GCP setup", which diminished trust enough that I decided to move everything away from Google. I'm a Xoogler, but even then getting through to the right support channels is hard.

Yandex services are pretty nice (they have an equivalent to most Google things), but even more important for me is that - even on the lowest plan - you can talk to a real human in support within minutes, 24/7.

[0]: https://b.tvl.fyi/issues/155


Uhm, sorry but Yandex of all things? Given that this is a Russian company with Kremlin having a "golden veto" power in?

No, thanks. Google may be evil but moving my data from Google to the Russian government spooks is really not a solution.


Yeah. I live in Russia and I trust this government more than e.g. the American one. It's always a matter of perspective.


I don't get this point of view. If you live in Russia, of all places, you'd likely want to avoid Yandex. On the other hand, for people from non-Russian countries Yandex is probably a better and safer choice than Google.


I made this same point awhile back to some colleagues, about my AmazFit smart watch. They were aghast that I'd have a Chinese product like that, given the possibility/likelihood of Chinese surveillance.

But, although China could monitor me, why would they care about some random guy out of 300 million Americans? And even if they cared, what could they do that might actually affect my life?

In contrast, we know that many US companies have an open wire to American law enforcement and surveillance agencies. And these people do have an interest in monitoring me (even if I'm not doing anything wrong), and they do have the power to harm me.

China might be eviller in many respects, but the products of a Chinese company are harmless to me, especially in comparison to domestic ones.

(And I also use Kaspersky for security on my home computers.)


I don't really understand your point.


The bureaucrats and agents don't cooperate. Your surveillance data ends up locked on the drives of agencies with no power to affect your life.


I don't know about Russia, but this is not really an accurate perception. US laws tend to protect US Citizens and residents. Even citizens of friendly countries like Australia don't have protection.

In some ways it's worse because Australia is five-eyes, so they can do a, I'll spy on your citizens you spy on mine kind of thing (which we know from Snowden was exactly what they were doing)[1][2].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jun/10/nsa-offers-...


Yes, that's the point of using tools from unfriendly countries -- though I wouldn't be surprised if there's data sharing there, I haven't heard evidence of it.


I worked for LiveJournal, which was owned by a Russian company and what our platform removed for “misinformation” was a nothing compared to what companies like Twitter do today. I know Navalny (A Russian dissident) account is still active whereas platforms like Facebook and Twitter have banned multiple elected US politicians. If you want to avoid censorship the Russian platforms are great places to go.


Yandex has the best image reverse search algos of all the search engines. Dont take my word for it, just go and try it. If you live in the US what is the most dangerous for you? To be spied by your own government, or a government on the other side of the planet?


I'm using Fastmail and have been super happy with them. I need to start looking into replacements for business suites though, since clearly Google Suites/Workspaces/Domains (whatever they're calling it this week) is making seriously unethical choices.


https://www.gmx.com/mail/create-email-address/

Or

Protonmail.com


An good old fashioned IMAP mailbox. It works fine, and my ISP has decent spam controls. Oh, and Fair Email (a client) on Android is awesome. Webmail is really slow when you get 300-400 emails a day that are not spam.


https://www.migadu.com/


It may not be perfect, but I switched to MobileMe for my personal email a long time ago and continue to use iCloud.

Search is for sure hit or miss, but I pay for it and feel... a bit better.

For my "professional" email I use Amazon Workmail with a custom domain.


I've not tried the new option myself so this isn't a recommendation, but if you are using iCloud for personal email yet are doing 'professional' email elsewhere because of the custom domain, then you may not know that iCloud now supports those custom domains.

Of course there may be other reasons why you want professional email separate, such as not having it at risk should Apple decide you've broken their T&Cs because poor AI/ML says so, and they close your account.


I think at the time I set it up that feature may not exist?

It isn't really anything sensitive, really more just when I am interviewing and related activities.

But I also want it to be a separate email instead of just an alias which I assume iClouds is. Could be wrong though.

Amazon's is just $5 a month so not really a huge drive to change it.


Fastmail and HEY


Hey, too rich for my blood


There are many options, as evidenced by the replies here. I've used Zoho for a few years now, no issues.


Fastmail


purelymail (https://purelymail.com/) is great! Can't recommend it enough.


Fastmail is great.


hotmail?


DDG leaks data like a sieve. When you type a query it's present in the URL. Use an engine like onesearch.com which obfuscate this. (or get DDG to add this basic feature!)


If you're really concerned with that, turn off GET mode, which turns on POST mode (https://duckduckgo.com/settings#privacy or https://duckduckgo.com/?kg=p for a direct link).


>When you type a query it's present in the URL

Why does that matter? Doesn't anything after the domain stay between your browser and the server you're communicating with, assuming https?


With HTTPS this shouldn’t be a problem, no?


It's visible in browser history


You can change GET to POST in DDG settings > Privacy


"No, your honor. They didn't consent. But I have corrected that."


"No, it's ok officer. We consented For them."


"No, detective. I'm certain that they wanted to consent. They must have forgotten to."


"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."


> with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits of better search in Workspace without having to opt-into search history being tracked for all Google services

This is at best extremely disingenuous and at worst could be illegal in the GDPR countries. Par for the course for Google though. The only good move here would be to have everyone who had opted out of search history set to off by default for this new setting as well. Otherwise you're actively violating the privacy and wishes of users based on their previously stated preferences. Shame.


this is just a mean strategy to obfuscate your real intent (enabling your service) from the ignorant user.


Thanks you for showing so clearly and so openly that you and google are full of crap.

> the somewhat confusingly named Web and App Activity

You know what is confusing ? re-enabling things with a new name on top of it, despite users disabling it before.


Please make your substantive points without name-calling and personal attacks. We don't need them, and they poison the ecosystem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...


I guess no does not mean no huh. But Nice try to explain away when people have already chosen to opt out!


Hi, user here. I already told you my choice. Not my fault you're not happy with how you phrased the question.

No means no.

It doesn't mean "OK, just the tip".


Think you can get someone at Google to actually notify everyone about the upcoming GSuite changes as I, and some others, have yet to be notified of them.

It is hard to trust companies that want to start billing me, it seems, without telling me first.


Do you happen to know why YouTube has started throttling the number of views on videos by channels with few subscribers?

Google is becoming even more infuriatingly scummy. Literally a minute ago I saw this post about YouTube throttling the number of views on videos by new channels:

https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/sim12o/well_...


Note: this seems to be about their paid "Workspaces" offering. I have a private paid domain email on Google Workspaces. I received their email and checked out their FAQs to see how it would affect me in terms of privacy.

Workspaces data is inherently said to be private under contract and not used for advertising or other Google purposes. Here are relevant snippets from their new FAQ:

- "Google never uses your data in Google Workspace core services for advertising."

- "Google Workspace search history includes search activity in Google Workspace services such as Gmail and Drive and is subject to the data protections that Google Workspace provides for users’ data."

Seems to me that other non-core services are not covered by it, which may be the reason for this split?


> - The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed.

This is specifically being done purely for evil purposes though, right?


What is going on inside Google? Far worse search results recently, verbal ads during Maps navigation directions, and stuff like this. Do they see some writing on the wall (eu pressure?) and they’re squeezing as much as they can while it’s an option?


This is the spiral of businesses based on personal data. They are pressured to meet quarterly earnings targets. As more people flee with their data, they must squeeze more out of what they have and can get.

They are trying to diversify into business services and hardware, but those are struggling even though often heavily discounted. Their tarnished reputation is making it harder for customers in those markets to trust them.


"quarterly earnings targets"

It's worse than that: It's YoY revenue growth targets that really matter to the stock price, hence the never-ending push to put more ads into places you never expected to see them.

FWIW I've pretty-much given up on YouTube due to the aggressive ad insertions.


Or, in other words, the huge price/earnings of all stocks (even large companies) require that those companies grow even when this is physically impossible. Otherwise there is a huge downwards correction on the price, and people that brought it by the unrealistic price (that's anybody that brought it) lose most of their money.

This is the price of participating in an irrational market.


Replying to myself so as to add the following quote from Rudy Rucker that seems to me terribly apropos:

"I never really understood the ideas in economics, in fact I almost failed to graduate from college because I couldn’t stand going to economics lectures. Hate, hate, hate the stuff. It’s like studying Bible stories or pseudoscience—economics has so little connection to daily reality. For instance, it’s completely obvious that companies can’t in fact grow forever, year after year, without hitting some debilitating limits. But the so-called value of a company is based on how much they grow from quarter to quarter. Economics as practiced by bankers is complete horseshit, but they’ve bought out all the politicians, so nothing reasonable ever gets done. In the long run, of course, the situation will resolve itself. Meanwhile we’re seeing a resurgence of the dystopic SF novel!"


NewPipe / Invidious or Youtube Vanced. So good, except when you accidentally experience raw YT again.


Its the same way that everything on TV turns into crap. It is all about maximizing profits while minimizing effort and focusing on the least common denominator of customers/viewers/users, and actually shrinking the userbase to maximize user profitability. So the result is the shit that half the people out there will just put up with.


They're near or past peak growth. Juicing the profits means they have to extract value by reducing costs and monetizing as much as possible. Steady dependable revenue with good customer service isn't good enough for American businesses any more.


They didn't build a significantly commercially successful product since gmail. Android was an acquisition.

They are in panic mode since they realize growth will be over. Search has stagnated, they missed on social (repeatedly) and they have nowhere to improve. Ventures like the self driving car etc. were all an expensive detour.

Google is the new Microsoft (or worse, Oracle). It's just a matter of time until the rest of the world figures this out.


Every single enterprise company I know of pays for gsuite. Every university too. They could just lean into that.


Every single enterprise company I know pays for Office 365.

The only two that pay for G Suite migrated it to Office 365, turned it off, and never looked back.


? As far as I am aware, Microsoft Office is still the dominant, de facto platform of the corporate world.

Gsuite is the underdog here and I wonder if they’re having trouble with retention and new customer acquisition.


They pay for both usually. You get one person who wants g suite in a department and IT buys an institutional license.


At least until some manager decides to revamp the UX to get a promotion, thus killing it.

I wonder how long it will take to happen.


Not going to happen. The software is entrenched like microsoft office at this point. These organizations buy both and they do the same things, just because its entrenched and expected among students and workers to have both at this point. What a position to be in.


The result of a system that legally binds corporations to maximize profits enforced via shareholder lawsuit.


"While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so."[1]

[1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html


How is a comment in a lawsuit against a private company relevant to a comment about the negative incentives of publicly traded companies?


Verbal ads during navigation?! I haven't really been driving anywhere new since covid started so I must have missed it. What are they like? "Take the next exit for a delicious Big Mac!"


"Turn after the Dunkin Donuts on the right onto Maple Street"


This has been in my app for a couple years - I hate it every time. Not only is it very clearly advertising, it's nearly always useless because the restaurant/whatever is barely or not at all visible on the approach to the turn. It's pretty clear they're going for paid landmarks, not useful ones (though I don't like landmark-directions either way).


Waaaaaaaiiiiittt, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up. You mean the comment you're responding to isn't being sarcastic?


No. I've been living outside the US since 2014 and just noticed it recently as I was back using driving directions. Seems to be at least once a trip, once an hour. Only ever uses large chain restaurants / banks as landmarks. Doesn't happen at all in Japan (yet).


Jesus wept, that's asinine.

Edit: Oughta start taking bets on how long until this makes its way into Waze, and then how long until Google prevents us from turning Waze's voice nav off.


> Oughta start taking bets on how long until this makes its way into Waze

Waze is already serving very aggressive modal-type ads mid-navigation.

I got a pop-up for a car repair shop 20 minutes out of my way, _mid-navigation_ with a big "add to route" option. Could not swipe it away, had to press a small 'x' button to close the ad. All this while driving and trying to figure out which way I should go the next intersection.


I immediately bounced off Waze because of all the advertising strewn throughout it, and the couple times I've re-checked over the past few years were all as bad. It's incredibly intrusive and disruptive, I have no idea why people use it nowadays.


waze is even worse because the ads pop up on you during navigation like a malicious webpage from 2003. I pulled over and uninstalled the app the first time that happened and never looked back.


Brawndo has what plants crave!

We're getting closer and closer every day.


Sometimes I’m glad I don’t live in the US. I heard these things on HN and I think, oh that’s absurd that doesn’t happen! Like advertising in windows 11, never seen it in Singapore and Taiwan. But then people show screen grabs and I’m like wow wtf!


Not dunkin donuts specifically yet, despite being near one, but yes to Wendy's, Taco Bell (in particular), Walmart, Best Buy, and several others at least.

Edit: ah, yeah, as reustle says, banks have made multiple appearances. Far less than fast food though.

Honestly they're a usually reasonable landmark choice, they tend to be at corners and are intentionally eye-catching and recognizable. But I hate it. And I'm pretty sure that's just being used as justification for why the "feature" as a whole is acceptable (it's not).


Could someone please point me to the spot in Google’s ads product to purchase these ads-in-navigation-directions? If these are really ads, there will be a place to buy them. Google doesn’t run ads for free.


They don't have to let small customers buy them, or put them up for auction like their other ads. Just offer it to big companies directly, especially ones that might be visual landmarks like a McDonald's or a Dunkin Donuts.


Google does not do this; they don’t have secret offline ad sales. Even their largest customers have to go through a UI to place every ad.

That’s why ads are so profitable for Google. The entire system is highly automated, which lowers costs.


It's kinda funny that you think there are no B2B sales or promotions involved in the world's largest advertising business, even in the face of increasingly-numerous evidence of them doing so multiple times for many years. I agree most cases don't, but zero is laughably, trivially false.

Big businesses absolutely have inside access to get things done that are not generally available. Heck, that's practically Google's entire support strategy - know someone who knows someone, otherwise deal with the automation which just repeats "no" in a loop. Sometimes it's just because it's not ready for wider onboarding (big customers get tapped for trialing big new features (like Uber/Lyft/etc's rideshare integration in maps), not all of which ever go further), sometimes very clearly not. E.g. current Facebook/Google legal battles, like https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/google-facebook-ceos-oversaw... , and that's far from the first. It's just the latest and greatest and stands a chance of actually going somewhere.

Sure, they may not be phoning up a friend and passing $$ directly to dodge using the UI's pricing. Instead they get automation built for them, so they don't have to do that. Because you're right, it doesn't scale.


Imagine what the global political implications of a landscaping company located between a sex shop and cermatorium being able to place navigational ads might be!


This actually happens in Japan, and until now I assumed it was not advertising.

I would translate it as "turn at the next left; where there is a ______."

The ______ is often a convenience store. hmmmm!


The flipside though is that Japanese urban planning doesn’t use street names the way American/European countries do and literally the only marker is the local konbini at the corner.

And turn at the corner 2-chome 4-ban 5-gou isn’t a helpful thing either.


These aren't ads, they're intended to provide a point of reference for users.


These aren't supposed to be seen as ads, but they are ads. I've never heard "turn right at the public library," but I have heard "turn right at the tiny dunkin donuts across the street from the huge public library."


Yep, it only does this for a single Jack In The Box for me at a trafficlight-eqiuped, large, clearly-marked cross street.


You _really_ need to brush up on your ability to recognize when you're being manipulated. If you can't see these as advertising you're probably misidentifying countless other ads in your life.


A gigantic pile of cash yet no world changing ideas to throw money at. No big ideas. Google is essentially search and ads today. Nothing more.

A series of startups will begin to cut away at the fat and the cycle will continue.


Well, they have a giant pile of cash. Their goal is to buy those startups.


It's not only Google; I've noticed this slow-but-accelerating decline for a few years now, and my theory is probably a bit too controversial even for HN, so I'll just be oblique about it: this is the result when hire people for who they are rather than what they can do. You end up with docile, obedient employees who don't care about anything other than the fact that they're working for Google and making $$$, and they're not going to push back against any decisions.


Or is it because these companies (not just Google) have now saturated their markets and to sustain revenue growth the only solution they see is to squeeze harder regardless of the ethics?

(upon thinking about it, the above is not incompatible with your POV).


I'm pretty sure large companies like Google often hire to prevent competitors from getting those employees, not for what those employees would bring to the company itself. Or maybe that's what you were getting at?


Beyond a certain size it becomes impossible for normal individuals to influence technology or product directions.


> verbal ads during Maps navigation directions

Say what? I've neither experienced nor heard others mention this, is this recent?

Coincidentally, as a result of an HN post earlier in the day (wifi required for GPS) I installed Osmand+ to try out for navigation.


There's another reply-chain, but yes, I get that ads for Jack In The Box, and it sounds like another user gets it for Dunkin Donuts. And it's not for lankmark purposes.


Spam in Gmail


What crazy to me is how hard to parse the email was. I could hardly make heads or tails of it, and I'm no dummy. It almost seemed intentional, and now it makes sense.

Even manually setting this feature once you understand it I can't do either!

So first you might land here:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328#zippy=%2Chow-do...

Then the instructions say:

> You can enable or disable Google Workspace search history:

> * Go to the My Activity page.

> * Click Other Google activity and then Google Workspace search history.

> * Click On or Off.

But this is wrong! When you follow the link the "Google workspace search history" is hidden in a hamburger menu in the top left. You have to click that to open the menu, THEN you can click on "Other Google Activity". But on THAT page there is no setting called "Google Workspace Search History". Just the old "Web & App Activity"

So what, I have to set a reminder for after 3/29/22 to come back to this screen? Madness!


Use LineageOS+microG and (at the very least) Aurora Store on your phone. Use Firefox containers to sequester all Google services away from your other activity. Of course, use uBlock Origin. Achieve near total peace of mind when faced with things like this.

Soon, I want to unsubscribe from all YouTube channels and move them over to RSS. I'll use a third-party YouTube client to watch videos queued from my feeds. Then, gradually replace the YouTube feeds with equivalent PeerTube/other feeds, since some creators I follow are doing that. I am thinking Brave Search might be a good replacement for Google as well. After this, I may not even need the Firefox container.


What is the reason firefox containers can't be used in private browsing mode? I really want to use them but also want to clear all stored data after closing a window. So far I've just been using firefox nightly, firefox, and ungoogled chromium to give me a total of three maximum "containers"... Is there a better way to benefit from private browsing modes while allowing for more containers?


I use a Firefox addon called "Temporary Containers". Basically unless I tell it overwise, every tab I open (unless it's the same domain) is opened in a new container. When the tab is closed, the container is deleted.

I use the automatic mode, but it's quite configurable in what you can do and works incredibly well.

It's way better than private mode IMO.


This would be ideal, but from what I understand this addon is built on the framework of mozilla's containers, which can not work in private browsing, which is a shame, I'm not sure why mozilla has set it up this way, although they likely have a good reason.


> all YouTube channels and move them over to RSS

I did this recently and it's wonderful. RSS-Bridge, locally hosted feeding into my locally hosted FreshRSS.

If you use a plugin like privacy redirect, you don't need to remember to use an alternate front end


As well as point them to a self hosted Invidious instance.


That reads as "too many users were disabling our creepy shit, so we're re-enabling it!"


YouTube recently did the same with autoplay. I hate autoplay with a passion, and watching the setting suddenly turn itself on again made me incoherently angry.


Auto play is the worst.

I also hate the turning on chimes

Not auto-muting when restarted/woken up

Blue led

Bright electronics.

It seems that everything is designed to scream at the user.


Black marker really helps to tone down blue LEDs btw.


Did that with the TV in my bedroom. Even the red stand-by led was impossibly bright. It turned out that the remote sensor was located behind the same glass :/


Storing user preferences reliably feels like one of the hardest problems in computer science. Especially if doing so would interfere with the metrics you're trying to grow so relentlessly.


There are extensions around to control this behavior and you can switch to invidious or freetube in worst case


I had that last week.. I thought I turned on by mistake as they made too close to navigation bar and other buttons..


Google Maps did the same thing in its latest update. There's an undismissable modal that asks you to "enable Google location service to continue" which I very explicitly have off. They make it feel like a technical requirement; if you tap "no thanks" it cancels your nav.

Meanwhile the whole thing is obviously a charade because voice guidance and the GPS enabled map are happily running behind the modal!


They also play a game where they refuse to center on your location without tracking enabled even though the GPS is working fine and the pip is on the map.


I tried Chromecast, but Google Home (app to configure Chromecast) required location. Without enabling it, I couldn't complete (or better: start) configuration…


I don't understand the confusion. Doubleclick ate Google from the inside. How can you possibly expect them to do anything else? Anything that favors your privacy, ever? They are in the business of consuming your data for profit. That is google's industry: consuming you.

They are absolutely running with the motto "be evil". You think some checkbox in a "privacy settings" window is going to stop it?


DoubleClick's ad domains are hard coded into Google Chrome [1], so that additional telemetry is sent to their ad servers on every request. You cannot disable it. It's never disclosed to users.

When you use Chrome, you're literally using the DoubleClick Browser.

Privacy and ethical concerns aside, this is a clear antitrust violation. Google's ad competitors are at an automatic disadvantage.

The FTC has gone after Intel for releasing a compiler that deliberately disadvantaged competitors, but Google doing much more egregious evil stuff to ad competitors isn't touched. I guess it pays to have the House of Reps Speaker Pelosi own copious amounts of profitable call options in Google. [2] It's profitable to look the other way, isn't it?

[1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148...

[2] https://nypost.com/2021/12/30/nancy-pelosi-buys-call-options...


your [1] link references a comment in the code, not actual working code. Can you do better or should we classify your entire post as fake news?


This comment seems unnecessarily aggressive given the code is pretty straightforward to navigate. If you were to read the source code a little further you'd jump into this code, called from OPs referenced function: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148... I'm not sure exactly what kind of 'proof' you're looking for , but this tracking isn't being hidden.


Thanks. The OP comment refers to line 35, while the actual code starts at line 232. I still think it's unreasonable to expect someone to scan 200 lines of source code to validate a claim.


I don't mind them consuming my "data" (i.e. knowing me better) for profit... for Google, that usually means they show you ads related to your search and relevant to you based on what it knows about you above all the results. Why do you think that's "evil"?

There are things that bother me. For example, blacklisting certain websites because people who have control over them tell them to, or removing certain things from auto-complete because of someone having control over them. But again, that doesnn't make THEM evil. It's the people who have gained control over them, mostly by threatening them of regulations (via disinformation in mass media) and most likely Epteinesque blackmailing of their executives.


This is illegal, Google will pay another millions of euro of fines in EU. You cannot just work around privacy settings by renaming the options.

The sad thing is that they probably already included the fines in the budget cause the benefits are bigger :(


> The sad thing is that they probably already included the fines in the budget cause the benefits are bigger :(

This is why we need exponentially increasing fines for repeat offenders and perhaps even harsher things like prison sentences for CEOs or the company itself (i.e. a temporary complete ban).


Hang on, are people frothing angrily because Google is telling users of Workspace that what they search _within workspace_ apps is retained for 18 months to make their search more useful?

While at the same time reminding them that that world and the ad world don’t colide?

I’d say most people who searched for their colleague’s presentation wont give two shits if google retains it.


Google is clearly an abusive monopoly and stifling innovation and privacy wherever possible.

HOWEVER, in this instance, I don’t really see the issue. Workspace customers will obviously want to search their document history, etc. and this info will be walled off from other sides of the business.

The melodramatic hysteria in the comments here is interesting though, and underlines just how far Google’s reputation has fallen in the tech community.

There is zero trust for Google here, and this lack of trust can even be a roadblock to making rational product decisions. People are rightly suspicious of power, because it always gets abused.


The fact that they're doing this should tell you all you need to know about Google's sense of integrity - or rather, total lack thereof.

What ever happened to "Don't be evil"?


They got rid of that tagline with project Dragonfly


So glad I switched to Duck Duck Go two months ago. Another reason to wean myself completely off Google products.


I've been on ddg for years now. The only time I have to use Google is when I'm hunting for very specific memes from years ago.


DDG for sure. I never use the goog unless I was tricked by a browser update or something similar.


I've used it for about 3 years now to avoid Google, but now I even think it's better for many searches.

But it doesn't work so well for foreign languages, images, or foreign language images. Example:

DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=p%C4%83l%C4%83rie+maramure%C8%99ea...

Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=p%C4%83l%C4%83rie+maramure%C...


While I see this is for their Workspace offering. If there is anyone who is discussing about Google search and DuckDuckGo, DDG has been competent enough (subjective) for a long time. And any incompetence of search can be worked around using DDG !bangs for those who are not aware of it - http://duckduckgo.com/bangs.

Bangs essentially lets you search directly on websites like Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, Amazon, Mozilla Developer Network, Arch Wiki and many many websites. Its a really great productivity hack.


Dear Google: you are becoming less likable by the second. For a long time you were the champion of user experience and you forced a lot of sleazy products to change or go out of business. Recently, it's like you've systematically discovered every dark pattern your evangelists once scorned. Please, please flip the don't be evil bit back to on. Evil Google is not very likable.


For me, the very extensive track record you allude to is more than enough to convince me that Google's never flipping the "don't be evil" bit back on. It's gone. Done. Sayonara. Adios. Bon voyage. Kaput. Fin. Au revoir.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.


I tend to agree. Companies don't seem to switch to being good once they go evil.

I would love it if someone could share a counterexample. I want it to be true that companies don't just turn evil but can become better too.


Once a single bad egg gets into upper management, the core of the company slowly becomes poisoned by similar folk who they employ and rot the company from the inside out.

Psychopaths (shown here)[1] show up where ever there is money and power, make life shit for all the better / empathetic staff, who end up leaving, gut the place and move onto the next company once it's trashed.

[1] https://pics.me.me/ha-ha-business-pig-roll-com-guys-i-havent...


Your problem is you think companies are good to begin with. Companies exist to make money. Nothing more or less.


Companies don't have to be shady, scummy, scammy, and customer-hostile to make money. They may make more money in the short term if they are, but in the long term people will avoid that company and it'll lose money.


How about Microsoft?


Would you like to upgrade to windows 11? You said no so I'll offer it again on the very next screen and give no way to turn off the nag

Would you like to login to your own computer with an online microsoft account - again no way to turn off the nag

Want to exit Teams or Onedrive? nag

And both m$ an google (via chrome) are scanning your computer for executables - for your safety of course!


Sadly I see similar behaviour from Apple on iOS.

When they change the terms of iCloud use the options are agree or the passive aggressive “Maybe be latter”.

That really means we’ll keep asking you until you agree.

Any company using the phrase “maybe latter” instead of “no” is not one you can trust.


To be honest, ToS is a bit different thing. You have no right to use services without accepting it at some point.


Surely, we should be able to reject and turn off the service though if the terms change? i.e. "I don't and agree and don't want this."


Unless they have made the system unfunctional wihout it… which is an another topic of discussion.


Stuffing bloatware on Windows, using dark patterns to try and get you to use Edge. Trying to force you to use you online accounts rather than local accounts. The whole doing good was just usual PR.


The forced obsolescence with Windows 11 designed purely to help Intel sell hardware at the cost of the planet's well-being was pretty evil.


For a second it seemed like they might be headed that way, but nope. They've made some fairly user-hostile decisions recently, at least IMO.


They have thrown the VSCode and WSL candies to the world and most of us don't notice anymore that they keep behaving as they always did.


You mean the metric hog that can only be turned off with a recompile? No, thanks.

Wsl, the barely usable product with breaking bugs, such as simple disk io, until wsl2 came to improve _some_ of the features? Nah.

The most detrimental change to IT, containers, still depends on hyper-v for networking in the latest version and can only build for the same kernel.

Cheap PR for garbage products to try and push PC monopoly.


They have been extremely successful with VSCode. I keep using emacs but nearly everybody I work with switched to VSCode. It even happened that a guy told me on a call "why doesn't your VSCode show [something]?" "Because emacs can show that but I don't care so I didn't install the package."

And yes, the people using Windows and deploying to Linux use WSL2 now instead of WSL. They used to run a Linux VM or dual boot. Another success for Microsoft. WSL2 can also run GUI applications. They'll end up controlling the Linux desktop.


Firstly, Windows is getting progressively more complex. Each new version seems to have a new ux. I help some old family members with their computers and they have a hard time knowing what’s what when I bring them a new pc.

Secondly, I found it very difficult to install another browser like chrome. It wouldn’t let me install chrome unless I downloaded a specific app from Microsoft store to allow my machine to use another browser besides edge. All the while closing annoying pop ups about how edge is just like chrome.

I’m done with their products.


You're confusing good with good PR.


still evil


On the other side, DuckDuckGo is becoming pretty reasonable. I now only need to flip back to google for some hard to search technical topics. DDG also brings up a ton more of the old internet, you get way more variety in the search results.


I have been using DDG for years. I inadvertently used google for a search (damn browser defaults) and i was genuinely difficult to find something relevant with the amount of ads cluttering it up.


Yea I’m always amazed when I inadvertently search via Google for something these days.


Yeah, whenever I end up on google for whatever reason I get a nag screen to try to trick me into agreeing to their tracking crap (with no easy way to say "fuck off, no") and it seems to come back very frequently. I use ddg pretty much exclusively now.


There are Firefox extensions that hide the ads which make a huge difference to search quality.


I fall back to !g when I don't find what I'm looking for. It happens too often for technical things. And Google is the only one that handles "verbatim searches". At least I'm splitting my trail of data between two companies.


I hear people say this but I haven't even desired to use a !g for several years now (good riddance). I wonder if it is for certain types of tech.


I found an example right now.

I looked on DDG for _ubuntu turn on a usb disk after it was switched off_ and it didn't return anything related to the query. I added !g and Google gave me [1] as the second result.

[1] https://superuser.com/questions/1626369/power-off-external-d...


It’s common for “ambiguous search terms” similar to “python database”.

I’d bet that an experienced ddg user might have workarounds for this kind of thing. I’ve certainly found adding a few extra terms gives me what I need.


Will they stay reasonable? "DuckDuckGo gains revenue via advertisements and affiliate programs."

Today I'm quite skeptical of any business that doesn't have a proper business model. I've seen it too many times: offer nice free things until you have enough users, and then start squeezing. Bait and switch.

At this point I'm more interested in internet search that isn't reliant on the goodwill and dignity of a private company.


> Today I'm quite skeptical of any business that doesn't have a proper business model.

But they have? DDG was founded 13 years ago...

And "bussiness model": https://wikiless.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo?lang=en#Business_model And: https://www.nichepursuits.com/how-does-duckduckgo-make-money...


I've been using Brave search. It's actually a change for the better, too.


Brave search is crap. It feels like DDG when it first launched. I want to like it, but the index it uses is old. I often get links that don't work.


I use Brave and ddg (depending on browser). Brave is only worse when it comes to location specific searches, otherwise for general searches I'm agnostic between the two.

Still fallback to !g bangs on every couple of days.


I've gotten several results were the link is no longer valid.


I may be wrong or naive, but I see this move (offer search history that won't be used for advertising) as a good one. Looks like they are finally trying to diversify their business models and have their users as customers, not product.

If true, that means our social pressure on Google (and Facebook, collaterally) is working, and we should keep applying it.


Still, it defaults to on, so if history is turned off and you miss the email, it will now be silently turned on.

The right thing to do would be to pop up a question asking if I want to opt in, keeping it to off if dismissed.

Considering all the other blocking modals Google is forcing me through as part of CAPTCHA when surfing the web, that should not be a big deal.

Opting an existing user into data retention without asking them is never defensible, and I imagine this will result in heavy fines in the EU down the line (after all, private individuals can be Workspace admins as well, it’s not strictly used by businesses)


The problem to me isn't that they flipped the Don't Be Evil Bit off, but that they have to ability to turn it on and off. Giving any entity this much power is a bad idea in the first place. Even if they do not presently abuse it, eventually someone will. And that is not something I want to pass on to future generations.


They are monopolizing evil too now!!


When has Google ever been the champion of user experience? Their core product is barely usable without an adblocker.


Gmail was a way, way, way better experience than Hotmail or anything else when it started (and even almost a decade later). Maps blew everyone's mind at launch too and instantly made an entire group of direction and mapping websites irrelevant. Google Earth was magical just spending hours trotting around the globe too. Reader (RIP) was by far the best RSS reader.


Maps and Earth were not in-house built but purchased.


Maps was amazing at first and then it got ruined bit by bit. But somewhere along the way it got awesome again. I think it's really good right now.


WAIT WHAT?

[real time search ongoing]

Goodness how have I not known this?!


Yep, I had Earthviewer 3D installed on my PC before Google Earth was a thing.


The maps guys then pushed on to even greater heights with … Google Wave…


> Gmail was a way, way, way better experience than Hotmail or anything else when it started

I recall seeing it as sluggish and awkward when I finally decided to check it, abusing Ajax. Other web interfaces (that I tried) were more lightweight and predictable, and regular mail clients I found to be a much better UX. So I've mostly attributed Gmail popularity to Google promoting it, possibly using that invite-only policy to make the users to spread the invitations. It sounds like at least some users actually liked it, but I don't think it's a clear example of a good service by Google.


Don't forget the other advantage of Gmail over other webmail hosts back then: the amount of free disk space they gave to every account was HUGE. And if you wanted regular mail clients, IIRC Gmail always allowed you to use a traditional mail client, both over IMAP and over POP3.


Definitely in the 90s and early 2000s at least, possibly longer. That was part of their thing, being the champion of user experience.


Early Google set themselves apart with the user experience. For example, Google Search's homepage's simplicity was astonishing at the time; a direct inverse of the bloated pages most of their competitors at the time favored (Yahoo, Alta Vista, AOL, and Dogpile were pretty bad if I remember correctly, and Ask Jeeves was somewhere in the middle. The others I don't remember as well). GMail may have not been the best technically speaking (I don't know), but from a user standpoint it was cleaner than the alternatives, who would include things like links to news stories in their inboxes.

I recommended people use Google in part because there was, at the time, less risk of them clicking on something and being confused by it. (Why is there news in my email? Where's my email? How do I search?)


On the other hand, now search for “bicycles” on Google.


Oh, there's a reason that I said 'recommended' past tense. ;)


The sad truth is that the average person won't care


It's easy to say this, mainly because the average person really just doesn't care.


> Users who have Google Workspace search history enabled —and perform searches in Google Workspace apps like Gmail and Drive— will see their search history shown as suggestions before or as they type their searches in these products. These apps will show a message letting users know that search history is enabled.

> In addition to the new Google Workspace search history setting, the end user Web & App Activity setting will continue to exist. However, Web & App Activity will control storage of search data from Additional Google services only, and will remain disabled by default for new users.

I’m failing to understand the problem? This just means that users will be able to see their search history for Workspace apps and will continue to NOT see history for consumer apps.


I often wish that Google's slogan was "Do Good" instead of "Do No Evil". It's easy to gloss over that "not".


Oh, it's even more interesting than that!

From Wikipedia [1]:

> Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took "Do the right thing" as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct.[1][2][3][4][5] The original motto was retained in Google's code of conduct, now a subsidiary of Alphabet. In April 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct's preface and retained in its last sentence.[6]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil


> 2022-03-29

For those with Legacy G Suite plans that are going away on May 1, this is convenient timing for Google to slurp up the user data of those who are about to leave the service.


But what alternatives are there? I just need a solution for the usual stuff: mail, contacts, calendar, notes, tasks, files and meetings. Microsoft? Haha, hell no (they never did free anyway). Also using multiple services (e.g. Fastmail for mail and Dropbox for files) is way more expensive.


I had been told the Legacy G Suite “unlimited” storage would be grandfathered. That turned out to be not true :(


I couldn't help but notice there's a second Google privacy fiasco in the top 10 on Hacker News today. The other topic is about Google Maps no longer allowing navigation without the wifi scanning permission on Android:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30167865

Within the last week or so I also noticed that the YouTube homepage -- the content shown at https://www.youtube.com/ when I'm signed in -- has switched to a mostly empty page demanding I turn on YouTube watch history:

https://imgur.com/a/45PxHZm

They literally removed all the content from the YouTube homepage in order to beg for permission to track history...

It's kind of hard to believe these moves are a coincidence. There seems to be a shift across multiple products, specifically Maps, YouTube, and Google Workspace.


People seem to forget that even if you pay Google you aren't their actual user, you are just a bundle of data to be sold for ad revenue. Paying, it seems, just makes you more valuable because now Google knows you pay for services and that signal is worth more for ad targeting.


Google sometimes makes good stuff (Go programming language) other times things like this.


It's not just Google, all the American companies are doing it.

I've noticed for years how my privacy settings on Android, as well as macOs and Windows 10, occasionally revert to the most privacy-invading choice.


the more devices services and programs i use, the more time i seem to spend, justifiably, monitoring, fiddling, and concealing. it's like living with people who try to watch you on the bathroom.

its disgusting and vile and exhausting and creepy. nothing about this even remotely approaches 'okay', and we need to stop. I've heard more than a few kids under 25 or so who don't remember when technology was just fun say things like 'uncle ted was right', and given their experience, i can't really fault them.


Yet, we all use their services, willingly or not. Need a class action and rigorous approach this problem. Else, this reinforcing loop will just continue


The description seems to suggest this is just changing how it works, but does this also remove the ability to disable web tracking in the process?


It's a good year for me :)

I've already moved mails away from Google, files from Drive etc.

So Google account I have mainly for phone (I want BB10 back!) and YT :/


What are the barriers to entry for the new google/search engine? Is it storage/index space and crawlers being blocked?


Resources. The Internet is huge, it takes a lot of hardware and energy to index as many pages as possible.


Google is becoming even more infuriatingly scummy. Literally a minute ago I saw this post about YouTube throttling the number of views on videos by new channels:

https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/sim12o/well_...


I stopped to use google services years ago. google is a bigger rat than nsa


Good luck clashing with the EU GDPR requirements. Bad for Google's pocket and their reputation. That said - this thread isn't doing their reputation much good anyway...!


You can't expect privacy from a company named "Go ogle". It is in the DNA.


Gmail already stores your Gmail. What's the danger in storing your email searches?


tldr; Automatically switching user privacy settings from "off" back to "on" is unacceptable. Tracking company Google does it anyway, says you're misunderstanding.


how many people here do NOT have a google account? lets do a roll call.


If you're using android, is it actually possible not to?

I'm not using any google product except android at this point. I need to use a few apps that require the BS of safetynet, and when this happens you're pretty screwed. I remember some years ago I was still able to setup an android phone without a google account, but it was so _intentionally_ broken there was no point.

People suggest Apple, but apple is just as bad if not worse in my eyes. I'm a dev, and I do not eat their kool-aid.

The "turning on activity tracking" of the post is nothing new to me. I have no means to prove this, but I'm quite privacy conscious and I went through every single setting in the google account and android during setup. The settings reset by themselves to tracking a couple of times per year. I do the same treatment to my family members, and I see the same end result (although in that case I cannot know if they were just coerced to tap "allow this thing" somewhere).

The end result is that I stopped trusting google quite a long time ago.

Regarding search, you can switch to pretty much any other search engine right now. DDG, bing.. it doesn't really matter much. They all got better, but the real kicker is that google got a lot worse to the point that I no longer see their engine useful for search queries. I've read some people here say "google still has better verbatim search".. HA, that's so far from the truth it's almost laughable. The only way I can get my terms in the results so far is with kagi and searx with additional filters.

I can say the same for most of their offerings. The technical excellence is still there, but it's being intentionally corrupted to the point that doesn't matter anymore.


wait... i am using an android and i skipped google login. i use aurora store/fdroid for apps, newpipe.

why can't you sent up android without google? i am running android 11 btw,


I assume it's possible, the question is what gets crippled. When I last tried this (earlier than android 10), one example that I remember is that you could add contacts, but not modify them without contact sync. It didn't have to be google's ("of course" - I worked it out by setting up davx), but functionality was crippled nonetheless. I was using lineage+microg+aurora for a while, and while I could certainly get around it, it's _not_ what I would expect from something I just bought and want to run without a google account.


look. i have bben using "backup all" a small app that imports and exports vcf and other formats. served me well between 3 phone changes. i gt it, people want fast fast stuff, impatience and all that but its not difficult




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