32 ms·

Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

947 points by twhb 5y ago

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 https://pastebin.com/raw/5ayJTDDp More info from Google: https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328 https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328

fdfsfesdfqeas 5y ago
maceurt 5y ago
cram0202 5y ago
You can't expect privacy from a company named "Go ogle". It is in the DNA.
lm2 5y ago
I stopped to use google services years ago. google is a bigger rat than nsa
slater 5y ago
That reads as "too many users were disabling our creepy shit, so we're re-enabling it!"
- josephg 5y ago
  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.
  - hydrogtehd 5y ago
    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.
    - reustle 5y ago
      Black marker really helps to tone down blue LEDs btw.
      - tremon 5y ago
        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 :/
  - Lamad123 5y ago
    I had that last week.. I thought I turned on by mistake as they made too close to navigation bar and other buttons..
  - grishka 5y ago
    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.
  - pndy 5y ago
    There are extensions around to control this behavior and you can switch to invidious or freetube in worst case
- thrtythreeforty 5y ago
  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!
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    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.
  - scim-knox-twox 5y ago
    I tried Chromecast, but Google Home (app to configure Chromecast) required location. Without enabling it, I couldn't complete (or better: start) configuration…
MrWiffles 5y ago
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"?
- tonfreed 5y ago
  They got rid of that tagline with project Dragonfly
reustle 5y ago
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?
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  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!"
  - tesseract 5y ago
    "Turn after the Dunkin Donuts on the right onto Maple Street"
    - Groxx 5y ago
      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).
      - jjulius 5y ago
        Waaaaaaaiiiiittt, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up. You mean the comment you're responding to isn't being sarcastic?
        reustle 5y ago
        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).
indymike 5y ago
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.
- lumost 5y ago
  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.
  - indymike 5y ago
    I've been using Brave search. It's actually a change for the better, too.
    - loonster 5y ago
      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.
      - poppytaker 5y ago
        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.
        loonster 5y ago
        I've gotten several results were the link is no longer valid.
  - 5y ago
uslic001 5y ago
So glad I switched to Duck Duck Go two months ago. Another reason to wean myself completely off Google products.
- tonfreed 5y ago
  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.
  - dismalpedigree 5y ago
    DDG for sure. I never use the goog unless I was tricked by a browser update or something similar.
  - xdennis 5y ago
    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%99ean%C4%83&iax=images&ia=images 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%C8%99ean%C4%83&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=p%C4%83l%C4%83rie+maramure%C...
_zllx 5y ago
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.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  > 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
  - james-redwood 5y ago
    As well as point them to a self hosted Invidious instance.
- Aurelius3 5y ago
  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?
  - Accacin 5y ago
    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.
spc476 5y ago
I often wish that Google's slogan was "Do Good" instead of "Do No Evil". It's easy to gloss over that "not".
- exhaze 5y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
bmarquez 5y ago
> 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.
- austinkhale 5y ago
  I had been told the Legacy G Suite “unlimited” storage would be grandfathered. That turned out to be not true :(
- 15characterslon 5y ago
  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.
lupire 5y ago
Gmail already stores your Gmail. What's the danger in storing your email searches?
alphabettsy 5y ago
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?
amf12 5y ago
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?
- aagha 5y ago
  > - 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?
fdfsfesdfqeas 5y ago
swayson 5y ago
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
4ec0755f5522 5y ago
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?
- 0xy 5y ago
  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/+/e51dcb0c148a1b0ab0080808d8d1b914d02f6057/chrome/browser/metrics/variations/variations_http_header_provider.cc#35 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148... [2] https://nypost.com/2021/12/30/nancy-pelosi-buys-call-options-for-google-disney-stocks/ https://nypost.com/2021/12/30/nancy-pelosi-buys-call-options...
  - tremon 5y ago
    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?
    - w1nk 5y ago
      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/+/e51dcb0c148a1b0ab0080808d8d1b914d02f6057/chrome/browser/metrics/variations/variations_http_header_provider.cc#220 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.
riverguardian 5y ago
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.
- twhb 5y ago
  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?
  - riverguardian 5y ago
    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.
    - akie 5y ago
      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.
Gentil 5y ago
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 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.
tomjonesey 5y ago
ajuc 5y ago
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 :(
- account42 5y ago
  > 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).
KSPAtlas 5y ago
Google sometimes makes good stuff (Go programming language) other times things like this.
schwanky 5y ago
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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
melpomenestits 5y ago
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.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
how many people here do NOT have a google account? lets do a roll call.
- wakeupcall 5y ago
  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.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    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,
    - wakeupcall 5y ago
      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.
holografix 5y ago
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.
pembrook 5y ago
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.
Little_Fish 5y ago
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...!
Graffur 5y ago
What are the barriers to entry for the new google/search engine? Is it storage/index space and crawlers being blocked?
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago
  Resources. The Internet is huge, it takes a lot of hardware and energy to index as many pages as possible.
scim-knox-twox 5y ago
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 :/
JaimeThompson 5y ago
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.
Razengan 5y ago
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_fuck https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/sim12o/well_...
avsteele 5y ago
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-i-turn-google-workspace-search-history-on-and-off 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!
nunez 5y ago
> 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.
magicjosh 5y ago
tldr; Automatically switching user privacy settings from "off" back to "on" is unacceptable. Tracking company Google does it anyway, says you're misunderstanding.
dbmnt 5y ago
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 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/ 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 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.

947 points by twhb 5y ago

fdfsfesdfqeas 5y ago

maceurt 5y ago

cram0202 5y ago

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

lm2 5y ago

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

slater 5y ago

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

josephg 5y ago
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.
- hydrogtehd 5y ago
  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.
  - reustle 5y ago
    Black marker really helps to tone down blue LEDs btw.
    - tremon 5y ago
      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 :/
- Lamad123 5y ago
  I had that last week.. I thought I turned on by mistake as they made too close to navigation bar and other buttons..
- grishka 5y ago
  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.
- pndy 5y ago
  There are extensions around to control this behavior and you can switch to invidious or freetube in worst case
thrtythreeforty 5y ago
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!
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  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.
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago
  I tried Chromecast, but Google Home (app to configure Chromecast) required location. Without enabling it, I couldn't complete (or better: start) configuration…

MrWiffles 5y ago

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"?

tonfreed 5y ago
They got rid of that tagline with project Dragonfly

reustle 5y ago

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?

monkeybutton 5y ago
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!"
- tesseract 5y ago
  "Turn after the Dunkin Donuts on the right onto Maple Street"
  - Groxx 5y ago
    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).
    - jjulius 5y ago
      Waaaaaaaiiiiittt, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up. You mean the comment you're responding to isn't being sarcastic?
      - reustle 5y ago
        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).

indymike 5y ago

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.

lumost 5y ago
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.
- indymike 5y ago
  I've been using Brave search. It's actually a change for the better, too.
  - loonster 5y ago
    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.
    - poppytaker 5y ago
      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.
      - loonster 5y ago
        I've gotten several results were the link is no longer valid.
- 5y ago

uslic001 5y ago

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

tonfreed 5y ago
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.
- dismalpedigree 5y ago
  DDG for sure. I never use the goog unless I was tricked by a browser update or something similar.
- xdennis 5y ago
  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%99ean%C4%83&iax=images&ia=images 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%C8%99ean%C4%83&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=p%C4%83l%C4%83rie+maramure%C...

_zllx 5y ago

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.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
> 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
- james-redwood 5y ago
  As well as point them to a self hosted Invidious instance.
Aurelius3 5y ago
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?
- Accacin 5y ago
  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.

spc476 5y ago

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

exhaze 5y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

bmarquez 5y ago

> 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.

austinkhale 5y ago
I had been told the Legacy G Suite “unlimited” storage would be grandfathered. That turned out to be not true :(
15characterslon 5y ago
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.

lupire 5y ago

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

alphabettsy 5y ago

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?

amf12 5y ago

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?

aagha 5y ago
> - 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?

fdfsfesdfqeas 5y ago

swayson 5y ago

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

4ec0755f5522 5y ago

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?

0xy 5y ago
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/+/e51dcb0c148a1b0ab0080808d8d1b914d02f6057/chrome/browser/metrics/variations/variations_http_header_provider.cc#35 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148... [2] https://nypost.com/2021/12/30/nancy-pelosi-buys-call-options-for-google-disney-stocks/ https://nypost.com/2021/12/30/nancy-pelosi-buys-call-options...
- tremon 5y ago
  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?
  - w1nk 5y ago
    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/+/e51dcb0c148a1b0ab0080808d8d1b914d02f6057/chrome/browser/metrics/variations/variations_http_header_provider.cc#220 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.

riverguardian 5y ago

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.

twhb 5y ago
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?
- riverguardian 5y ago
  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.
  - akie 5y ago
    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.

Gentil 5y ago

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 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.

tomjonesey 5y ago

ajuc 5y ago

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 :(

account42 5y ago
> 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).

KSPAtlas 5y ago

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

schwanky 5y ago

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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

melpomenestits 5y ago

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.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

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

wakeupcall 5y ago
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.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  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,
  - wakeupcall 5y ago
    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.

holografix 5y ago

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.

pembrook 5y ago

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.

Little_Fish 5y ago

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...!

Graffur 5y ago

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

scim-knox-twox 5y ago
Resources. The Internet is huge, it takes a lot of hardware and energy to index as many pages as possible.

scim-knox-twox 5y ago

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 :/

JaimeThompson 5y ago

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.

Razengan 5y ago

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

avsteele 5y ago

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-i-turn-google-workspace-search-history-on-and-off 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!

nunez 5y ago

> 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.

magicjosh 5y ago

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

dbmnt 5y ago

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 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/ 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 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.