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VPN by Google One
- crispyporkbites 6y agoIs this a some kind of sick, sarcastic joke?
- Thorentis 6y agoOnly if in your mind "VPN" equals "anonymity and privacy" (which it shouldn't).
- crispyporkbites 6y agoThe P stands for Private so I think privacy would be a part of it somehow.
- kennywinker 6y agoAnd the V stands for virtual, which means "almost". So if it's almost private it fits the name.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Jtsummers 6y agoPrivate vs public. VPNs are to allow you to connect to a private network over a public network. They are not about user privacy. Once you hit that private network, privacy is determined by other protocols, not the VPN itself.
- kadoban 6y agoWhat should a VPN be for if not privacy?
- wmf 6y agoAccessing legacy corporate networks.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoproviding a thin smokescreen of plausibility that you are actually in the country you need to be in to access a particular media resource. Which for some reason I don't expect Google's VPN to help you with at all.
- lima 6y ago> Which for some reason I don't expect Google's VPN to help you with at all. They explicitly say that the VPN will choose the nearest exit point for best performance so, no, it won't.
- d1zzy 6y agoGeographical IP relocation seems like a common reason to use it. Also just because Google may have access to some information it doesn't mean that everyone else has. You can't stop companies from gathering information when you interact with their services but you can do things to avoid having all that information aggregated (it would require using different IP addresses for different services, so a VPN can help, among other things).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- snazz 6y agoSome public networks (like those at airports and coffee shops) still do sketchy things like injecting ads into HTTP sites and breaking DNS. A VPN is a great solution to these problems.
- dudus 6y agoMost of the time to access netflix catalogue from a different country.
- malux85 6y agoI know, I actually laughed out loud.
- sleavey 6y agoWill Google monitor visited sites?
- gman83 6y agoNo: https://www.gstatic.com/subscriptions/marketing_page/vpn/white_paper_4f995ab5d7c7edc3d3f14f2e0593f790.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/subscriptions/marketing_page/vpn/whi...
- kennywinker 6y ago"Google will never use the VPN connection to track, log, or sell your browsing activity¹" "1. Some minimum logging is performed to ensure quality of service, but your network traffic is never logged and your IP is not associated to your activity." Even with that fairly well spelled out promise, I trust google about as much as I trust $RANDO_VPN, so... hardly at all?
- baskire 6y agoThey won’t at the vpn connection but they will elsewhere. And they can design the vpn to make tracking at other layers more possible.
- cma 6y ago> your IP is not associated to your activity Does this mean your incoming IP, or your outgoing IP? And if payment info or Google identity is associated with your activity, why would they need to bother associating an IP to your activity?
- haecceity 6y agoThis is pretty cheap if you don't care about privacy
- codezero 6y ago$10/mo is way more expensive than most VPN offerings. I've been paying something around $2.50/mo for Private Internet Access for years now.
- hwbehrens 6y agoThe $10 is for the entire services bundle (storage, support, etc). The VPN alone is $1.99.
- codezero 6y agoAh, thanks for the clarification! My bad.
- radicalriddler 6y agoI know he was also referencing the VPN, but this also comes with Drive storage and other "benefits" in the Google ecosystem. I mean, these days terrabytes cost peanuts so it probably doesn't make a difference.
- griffoa 6y agoWhy pay $10 to have my ass tracked, when I can have my ass tracked for free
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 6y agoA VPN from Google? Awww hell no. I don't even use their DNS. Did they not learn anything from Facebook's VPN fiasco?
- powersnail 6y agoMaybe the rising number of VPN providers is concerning to Google, so it decides to become one. It you can't beat them, join them!
- staplers 6y agoI wonder how quickly that "we do NOT log" terms and conditions will change after public release.
- jandrese 6y agoI wonder if you'll be able to sign up for a GMail account using a Google One endpoint?
- jeffbee 6y agoThat's a pretty insightful question. If people use the outbound addresses of these VPNs for disproportionately abusive activities then the reputation of those IPs and netblocks will eventually decline. It could come to pass that you wouldn't be able to establish a accounts from these IPs or, if you did, it would be in some kind of penalty box initially. That would go for all major providers, not just Google accounts.
- xnx 6y agoThat's part of the attraction to me. I'd love my VPN activity to blend in with all the other activity (crawlers, etc.) coming from Google.
- jeffbee 6y agoI seriously doubt that you'll get that benefit from this service. When I use the Google VPN on my Android, my outbound IP is part of a completely separate AS they dedicate to this purpose, not on AS15169 like all Google's own outbound traffic.
- ProAm 6y agoNever in a million years would I trust google as my VPN provider. 1) No customer support 2) it will probably be cancelled in 18 months 3) they already spy on me enough with search, android, google keyboard, gmail
- chickenpotpie 6y agoIs there really an issue if it gets cancelled? You can just get a new VPN. It’s not like other google products where you’re going to lose data or have to rebuild systems.
- kadoban 6y agoIt's still a pain setting up a new one and learning its quirks. If there was a compelling reason otherwise, might be worth it. Can't think of any upside myself, even the price isn't good.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Can't think of any upside myself, even the price isn't good. The price is zero if you are already on that Google One tier, which is pretty good. Whether its good if you aren't depends on not just the VPN service itself, but how much you value the other things provided by Google One.
- dudus 6y agoIsn't the point of google one to have some services such as support?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 6y ago> 1) No customer support Google One has customer support. Largely, Google One is paid support Google consumer products,. That's actually one of the main selling points. Since this is a feature of a particular Google One tier, it comes with support. > 2) it will probably be cancelled in 18 months Probably not. > 3) they already spy on me enough with search, android, google keyboard, gmail How would being a VPN (for Android only) provider change that? It doesn't increase Google's ability to spy on you, and it decreases other people's ability to. Which, insofar as your private information is valuable to Google, it makes sense for them to do as effectively as possible, even if you take the most cynical view of their motives.
- nabla9 6y agoSince this is service you pay for, and not paid by ads and Google says it will not track, log or sell activity it's probably fine.
- admax88q 6y agoPRISM
- nabla9 6y agoFortunately Intelligence services won't provide their snooping services for law enforcement. You can use torrent, and stay anonymous from everyone else. Btw. other VPN services are not secure from intelligence services either. If anything NordVPN and others get extra scrutiny and monitoring allocated for them.
- iJohnDoe 6y agoGoogle, is that you?
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoWhat is next VPN by NSA ? :) "Don't worry we already know everything about you, it is easier this way" :)
- cm2187 6y agoVPN by RIAA
- cblconfederate 6y agoNo, it's "You know, we 've been spying on you for years for free. You 're boring, how about we finally make some money out of it? Pay up"
- panarky 6y agoI trust a VPN from Google far more than others, with the possible exception of a VPN I set up myself.
- iJohnDoe 6y agoGoogle, is that you?
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoROFL. I would now give multiple points if I could, still laughing ...
- Tanath 6y ago> What does the VPN log? > In order to provide peace of mind for our users that their activity is private from the VPN operator and from potential attackers, VPN by Google One does not log user activity on the network or other information that could reveal personally identifiable information about them. The following data is NOT logged by the VPN for a given user: ● Network traffic, including DNS ● IP addresses of the devices connecting to the VPN ● Bandwidth utilized by an individual user ● Connection timestamps by user
- 6y ago
- ikeboy 6y agoI trust VPN providers that have been asked in court to provide data and refused because they don't log more than I trust Google not to log here.
- ebg13 6y ago> Privacy and security is core to everything we make. Is this Poe's law in action?
- commandlinefan 6y agoTheir privacy and security, not yours.
- rubyfan 6y agoI’ll leave this here for convenience of the next reader... Poe’s law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
- jeffbee 6y agoDoes this differ in any way from the VPN you get from Google Fi, that launched in 2018?
- dragonwriter 6y agoIt probably differs in that you don't need to be on Fi, which is a pretty major difference.
- jeffbee 6y agoThat's what I was getting at. It makes Fi slightly less sticky for me if I am also going to get the VPN feature with the Google One that I also pay for.
- Osiris 6y agoWhat is Google One? Is this the service formally known as Google Apps or some other service? I find it hard to keep track of all their products because they change so much.
- mankyd 6y agoGoogle One is essentially paying for more storage on Drive, I think? I am not sure what else it comes with.
- kwefnrjtgry 6y agoYou also get more storage for Gmail and Google Photos (if you didn't enable compression), occasional discounts/free trials for paid Google services and ability to speak to "Google experts" if you have a problem.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> What is Google One? Google One is Google's paid-storage-plus-premium-support-for-consumer-products service. You could view it as, in an imprecise way, the consumer counterpart to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite, formerly Google Apps.)
- btashton 6y agoI wonder if this is the same VPN technology they have been using with Google Fi for public WiFi access points https://support.google.com/fi/answer/9040000 https://support.google.com/fi/answer/9040000
- yunohn 6y ago> Google will never use the VPN connection to track, log or sell your browsing activity But Google doesn't need your browsing history via the VPN connection. It only needs you to continue using the same browser you normally do, so that they can do their normal cookie tracking for Ads...
- n_io 6y agoThis is farcical. I actually thought this was a title from an article off The Onion at first.
- unknown2374 6y agoWhat if people use VPNs to avoid being tracked by Google.
- wmf 6y agoThen they're doing it wrong and should be using a cookie blocker instead.
- mehrdadn 6y agoThe whitepaper they link to on the bottom might be more interesting: https://www.gstatic.com/subscriptions/marketing_page/vpn/white_paper_4f995ab5d7c7edc3d3f14f2e0593f790.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/subscriptions/marketing_page/vpn/whi...
- 3guk 6y agoUnless I’m mistaken it just appears to be for Android phones ? I guess I can see some value in it, but will no doubt be heading for the Google graveyard in 18-24months !
- xnx 6y ago"iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon"
- txsoftwaredev 6y agoIt's been included with their Google Fi service for a while. Unless they are planning on killing Google Fi their VPN service is going to stick around I would assume. But they did just kill off my nest secure I bought, which was very disappointing.
- jeffbee 6y agoIt says iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon. Not ChromeOS though?
- cblconfederate 6y agoaka Surveillance As-A-Service
- yamrzou 6y agoAt least they are being honest, it's "Increase your online security" instead of "Increase your online privacy" :)
- uluyol 6y agoI wonder how this compares to Cloudflare's WARP product [1]. [1] https://1.1.1.1/ https://1.1.1.1/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ogre_codes 6y agoEven if you assume they do honor their promise to not tie any user accounts to the traffic, this would provide Google valuable traffic data.
- chickenpotpie 6y agoI find it strange that they’re tying this VPN to a subscription with drive, gmail, and google photos. Who cares if the VPN logs are anonymizes if I’m using the VPN to upload all my files and send emails to the same account as the VPN?
- wooptoo 6y ago> Google will never use the VPN connection to track, log or sell your browsing activity¹ I like the honesty here. Oftentimes you learn more about someone's intention by paying attention to the omissions.
- tatersolid 6y agoSo you think Google is admitting they will track, log, and sell non-browsing traffic history? That seems unlikely.
- wooptoo 6y agoThe emphasis was on "VPN connection". They won't use the VPN connection, but they will use everything else.
- nuker 6y agoWill this one trigger Unknown Device alarms in Gmail as other VPNs do?
- ucha 6y agoI understand why no one would want to trust Google and after Snowden's revelations, I don't see why anyone should. But when it comes to the largest VPNs such as ExpressVPN or Nord VPN, it is impossible to tell who is truly behind them. You cannot put a name on physical person in charge which is very worrying. And since the NSA is known to use front companies to spy on people [1], why couldn't they be behind all these other VPNs? At least, we know who runs Google. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131016033046/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/15/the_nsa_s_new_codebreakers https://web.archive.org/web/20131016033046/http://www.foreig...
- jeffbee 6y agoPrivacy enthusiasts often seem blind to this risk. I think it's quite likely that virtually all of these VPN providers are run by either state agencies or organized criminals. As the person who personally ran almost all Tor exits for a brief period in the early 2000's, I am here to tell you that if you cannot definitely identify the operator of your VPN or proxy service, then you probably should not use it.
- sufehmi 6y agoTHIS. I can not believe how many people just blindly recommend VPN like some silver bullet. Using untrustworthy VPN as a privacy solution is like jumping from the fire into the pavement 20 stories below.
- lowdose 6y agoThat differs between people, I personally would not mind the NSA running ExpressVPN as a covert outlet because than I at least know for certain my is kept secret by a secure state operator that has incentives aligned with my personal interests. Any other operator runs the risk of becoming high jacked by other state operators. If you can hack Sony, break DNC email servers, hospitals for records, manipulate windows server functionality or create Stuxnet than a VPN is a cake walk. A VPN was until this offering from Google a trolley problem. I gladly pay for Google products because they work for me. I even upload my porn to Google Photos because of the superiority of their streaming capabilities coming from the youtube backend.
- riyakhanna1983 6y agoI'm confused. If the product targets tech savvy customers, does Google not already know its reputation among the group?
- lenitabinol 6y agoI pay $3/month for NordVPN, but many IPs are blocked from making Google searches. I wonder if this will be compatible with Puppeteer/Playwright
- randompwd 6y agoUnder the heading Security you can trust, they list: > Google will never use the VPN connection to track, log, or sell your browsing activity¹ I can't wait for that term of contract to slyly disappear and be replaced by more confusing and obfuscated terminology in, what, maybe 36-ish months?
- tucif 6y agoFrom the linked pdf in the footnotes, looks like they are rolling their own network protocol: "At launchtime, the VPN protocol will be a Google proprietary protocol; however, to ensure a high throughput while minimizing battery consumption, we will soon adopt IPsec as the data tunnel protocol due to its native support in Android. We may eventually use other protocols, such as Wireguard, as their native support improves or on platforms where no specific protocols have a specific advantage."
- rvz 6y ago> Coming soon: Increase your online security with the VPN by Google One Translation: Coming Soon: Tell us all about yourself and everything you do by signing up to our new service Google One. It comes with a VPN! Trust us, we won't tell! > iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon It seems that some think you can fool people all the time with 'services' like this but companies like Google don't ever learn from their own mistakes. [0] [1] Phrases like 'Privacy and security is core to everything we make.' is another snake-oil tagline which is another branded trap. Not falling for this one. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/apple-bans-facebook-vpn/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/apple-bans-facebook-vpn/ [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-data-collector-through-apples-back-door/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da...
- swiley 6y ago>> iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon Why does all this crap need it's own app? We have standard protocols for this and some of them are actually very good.
- traveler01 6y agoPeople use VPNs to run away from companies like Google...
- iJohnDoe 6y agoCan’t upvote this enough.
- pcglue 6y agoWe wouldn't need this VPN if Google didn't suck up all our information in the first place.
- mark_l_watson 6y agoI am not surprised by the level of criticism in the comments here. However, paid Google services may be cancelled but they have terms of service. For example, Google Workplaces (used to be called GSuite) states that they use none of your data for advertising and make privacy claims. I am a relatively new customer and I believe it. On the other hand, there are good alternatives like ProtonMail and FastMail for people who don’t trust Google. I have been paying for both ProtonMail and FastMail for quite a while, but I find my personal workflow better with Google Workplaces: things like automatic email and calendar integration and also Cloud Search that lets me search every digital artifact in my life from one place. What finally convinced me was that both my former employer CapitalOne and also my current employer Olive AI trust Google Workplaces, so why shouldn’t I.
- cm2187 6y agoSo the solution is for consumers to read a 60 pages legal document written in font 6 for each service they subscribe to, and which may change on short (or no) notice? Of course people make their decisions based on trust.
- mark_l_watson 6y agoWell, you have great alternatives. ProtonMail is rolling out secure storage, they already have VPN service that I am currently using, and some calendar support. FastMail is also a very good all around service. Plenty of room for people to make their own choices.
- ffpip 6y agoPrivacy built in... Oh fuck, wrong company
- dzhiurgis 6y agoTough choice between Google and some NorthVPN company incorporated in Caymans ;D
- iJohnDoe 6y agoYou would have to be a complete idiot to use this. You might as well put a Google Nest camera in your bedroom and let Google and their contractors watch you. Oh, wait.
- 0x008 6y agoCan somebody explain to me what the point of this is? You cannot pirate, since google certainly cooperates with legal entities, you cannot avoid tracking, well, because google. So I am really interested in an answer here: Is there any beneficial use case for this? They say it's security? How is this more secure than regular HTTPS? What do I gain by paying for this?
- FreshFries 6y ago> Can somebody explain to me what the point of this is? > What do I gain by paying for this? Some people who use "pay for VPN" do this to protect their browsing privacy against "the first mile" (read: your ISP or sloppy free WiFi). Security is a very, very broad brush.