23 ms·

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 s

• 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.
      • yreg 5y ago
        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.
        • akie 5y ago
          I try to avoid them wherever possible. There are quite a few decent alternatives for many of their core services.
          • autoexec 5y ago
            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.
            • akie 5y ago
              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/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...) 2. Install ghostery (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/) 3. Install Cookie Auto-Delete (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...) 4. Use Google Container (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...) Then start advocating using https://plausible.io/ https://plausible.io/ over Google Analytics in your own sites where possible, and use https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/ or https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ for search. For e-mail there are many options besides gmail.
        • scim-knox-twox 5y ago
    • greyface- 5y ago
      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?
      • pilif 5y ago
        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?
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • the_pwner224 5y ago
          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.
        • uberman 5y ago
          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.
    • zeruch 5y ago
      "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.
    • lazyeye 5y ago
      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.
    • rednixion 5y ago
      “…(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).
    • blip54321 5y ago
      ... just like the strong privacy guarantees on Yahoo Mail, before Yahoo ran into financial hard times?
    • hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      > 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.
    • matkoniecz 5y ago
      > 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.
      • mankyd 5y ago
        > 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.
        • ori_b 5y ago
          > 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.
        • matkoniecz 5y ago
          > 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_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#FISA_warrants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
    • dmitriid 5y ago
      > 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?
      • joshuamorton 5y ago
        > As recent court finding revealed this is most likely a lie You can of course link to this court finding, right?
    • titzer 5y ago
      > 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.
    • jcranberry 5y ago
      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?
  • oefrha 5y ago
    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.
    • avnigo 5y ago
      One concern does not necessarily negate the other, hence why they exist as different permissions.
    • scbrg 5y ago
      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.
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    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.
  • londons_explore 5y ago
    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).
• drpixie 5y ago
  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.
  • prox 5y ago
    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.
    • Ensorceled 5y ago
      > 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.
    • bsenftner 5y ago
      > 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.
      • prox 5y ago
        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.
• malka 5y ago
  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.
  • dang 5y ago
    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://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=disincent%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
• yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  That's actually mostly reasonable, but then why default on instead of either keeping the closest existing setting or asking?
  • riverguardian 5y ago
    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.
    • haswell 5y ago
      > …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.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • nixass 5y ago
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  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?
  • robertlagrant 5y ago
    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.
    • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      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.
    • herio 5y ago
      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.
• xg15 5y ago
  > or want search experiences built on top of prior ones Refining a search I just did does not require storing a complete search history.
  • riverguardian 5y ago
    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.
    • chaps 5y ago
      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.
      • friedturkey 5y ago
        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.
        • tomnipotent 5y ago
• richardles 5y ago
  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.
  • lawn 5y ago
    > 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.
  • drawfloat 5y ago
    Default ON when it is known a user has previously opted out is not reasonable.
• cik 5y ago
  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.
  • danuker 5y ago
    > 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.
    • flyinghamster 5y ago
      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.
    • drpixie 5y ago
      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.
• sdoering 5y ago
  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?
• nottorp 5y ago
  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.
  • robertlagrant 5y ago
    Is that true for Google Workspace search?
    • nottorp 5y ago
      See the "no one trusts" section :)
    • numbsafari 5y ago
      Search for Drive has long been garbage.
      • magicjosh 5y ago
        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?
• rzz3 5y ago
  Default it to whatever the user’s google-wide activity settings are. Let admins disable it for the whole org.
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  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.
• roylez 5y ago
  It is amazing that you still have positive karma.
  • matkoniecz 5y ago
    I have not downvoted it as I see it as a nice example of why Google should be receiving fines in billions of euro.
• basisword 5y ago
  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.
  • flerovium 5y ago
    "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."
  • eganist 5y ago
    > 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.
    • tedivm 5y ago
      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.
      • IgorPartola 5y ago
        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.
• aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
• ramblerman 5y ago
  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.
  • dang 5y ago
    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://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=disincent%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
    • Arcsech 5y ago
      I don’t see a personal attack here.
      • dang 5y ago
        You have a point—maybe not really a personal attack, but still aggressive and poisonous and therefore not what we want here.
  • grog454 5y ago
    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.
    • hnfong 5y ago
      I also fail to see where the personal attack lies...
• evocatus 5y ago
  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.
  • gobip 5y ago
    What do you use in replacement for GMail?
    • benrapscallion 5y ago
      Fastmail and HEY
      • mjmj 5y ago
        Hey, too rich for my blood
    • irthomasthomas 5y ago
      https://www.gmx.com/mail/create-email-address/ https://www.gmx.com/mail/create-email-address/ Or Protonmail.com
    • tazjin 5y ago
      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 https://b.tvl.fyi/issues/155
• Graffur 5y ago
  You need consent from the users - how did this pass compliance?
• huqedato 5y ago
  this is just a mean strategy to obfuscate your real intent (enabling your service) from the ignorant user.
• matkoniecz 5y ago
  > 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.
• cebert 5y ago
  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.
• Fiahil 5y ago
  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 ?
  • snowwrestler 5y ago
    How can search results within your Google Workspace be “mostly garbage?” Unless maybe your work emails and corporate documents are mostly garbage?
    • robrenaud 5y ago
      The search engine can be garbage. Perhaps surprisingly, Google's own internal search engine was pretty trash for many years.
    • Fiahil 5y ago
      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.
• usrbinbash 5y ago
  The default for any data collection no matter what it is for, should be OFF. End of discussion.
  • scim-knox-twox 5y ago
    That's why I don't understand GPC (https://globalprivacycontrol.org/ 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.
    • Lev1a 5y ago
      > GDPR require opt-out by default You probably meant to write either "optED-out by default" or "opt-in default", right?
• throwawaymanbot 5y ago
  I guess no does not mean no huh. But Nice try to explain away when people have already chosen to opt out!
• tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  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.
• numbsafari 5y ago
  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.
• throwitout22 5y ago
  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.
• JaimeThompson 5y ago
  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.
• zht 5y ago
  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
  • belter 5y ago
    Google is pulling a "Soup Nazi" on you... "The Soup Nazi": https://youtu.be/euLQOQNVzgY https://youtu.be/euLQOQNVzgY
  • neatze 5y ago
    > “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.
  • vertis 5y ago
    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"
• causi 5y ago
  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?
• Razengan 5y ago
  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_fuck https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/sim12o/well_...
• blackboxlogic 5y ago
  "No, your honor. They didn't consent. But I have corrected that."
  • blackboxlogic 5y ago
    "No, it's ok officer. We consented For them."
    • blackboxlogic 5y ago
      "No, detective. I'm certain that they wanted to consent. They must have forgotten to."
• titzer 5y 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.
  • jcranberry 5y ago
    If there's one feature that I would assert almost everyone wants which requires tracking some data, its search history recommendation.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • Nbox9 5y ago
      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)
      • joshuamorton 5y ago
        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.
• tedivm 5y ago
  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.
  • jcranberry 5y ago
    It seems like you can disable it, it'll just be a different button.
    • tedivm 5y ago
      > - 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.
      • jcranberry 5y ago
        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.
• tlogan 5y ago
  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?
• indymike 5y ago
  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.
• rkagerer 5y ago
  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".
• casralad 5y ago
  Google used to be a pretty respected brand in tech spaces, didn't it?
• codechad 5y ago
• grahamm 5y ago
  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.
• seba_dos1 5y ago
  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.
• nerdjon 5y ago
  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.
• some1else 5y ago
  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.
• terracottage 5y ago
  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.
• mark_l_watson 5y ago
  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.
• sam0x17 5y ago
  > 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.
• Darmody 5y ago
  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.
• stephenr 5y ago
  > 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.