I received an email from Google yesterday that communicated, with much obfuscation, the following key points:<p>- The “Web & App Activity” setting for Google Workspace users will be ignored by Gmail, Drive, Docs, Calendar, Chat, Meet, Keep, and several other services.<p>- 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.<p>- The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed.<p>- These changes will take effect on 2022-03-29.<p>Full email text: <a href="https://pastebin.com/raw/5ayJTDDp" rel="nofollow">https://pastebin.com/raw/5ayJTDDp</a><p>More info from Google: <a href="https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328</a>
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 <i>all</i> 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 <i>all</i> Google services.<p>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.
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.<p>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:<p>- "Google never uses your data in Google Workspace core services for advertising."<p>- "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."<p>Seems to me that other non-core services are not covered by it, which may be the reason for this split?
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?
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.<p>Even manually setting this feature once you understand it I can't do either!<p>So first you might land here:<p><a href="https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328#zippy=%2Chow-do-i-turn-google-workspace-search-history-on-and-off" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328#zippy=%2Chow-do...</a><p>Then the instructions say:<p>> You can enable or disable Google Workspace search history:<p>> * Go to the My Activity page.<p>> * Click Other Google activity and then Google Workspace search history.<p>> * Click On or Off.<p>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"<p>So what, I have to set a reminder for after 3/29/22 to come back to this screen? Madness!
Use LineageOS+microG and (at the very least) Aurora Store on your phone. Use Firefox containers to sequester all Google services away from your other activity. Of course, use uBlock Origin. Achieve near total peace of mind when faced with things like this.<p>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.
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.<p>They are absolutely running with the motto "be evil". You think some checkbox in a "privacy settings" window is going to stop it?
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.<p>The sad thing is that they probably already included the fines in the budget cause the benefits are bigger :(
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?<p>While at the same time reminding them that that world and the ad world don’t colide?<p>I’d say most people who searched for their colleague’s presentation wont give two shits if google retains it.
Google is clearly an abusive monopoly and stifling innovation and privacy wherever possible.<p>HOWEVER, in this instance, I don’t really see the issue. Workspace customers will <i>obviously</i> want to search their document history, etc. and this info will be walled off from other sides of the business.<p>The melodramatic hysteria in the comments here is interesting though, and underlines just how far Google’s reputation has fallen in the tech community.<p>There is zero trust for Google here, and this lack of trust can even be a roadblock to making rational product decisions. People are rightly suspicious of power, because it always gets abused.
The fact that they're doing this should tell you all you need to know about Google's sense of integrity - or rather, total lack thereof.<p>What ever happened to "Don't be evil"?
While I see this is for their Workspace offering. If there is anyone who is discussing about Google search and DuckDuckGo, DDG has been <i>competent enough</i> (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 - <a href="http://duckduckgo.com/bangs" rel="nofollow">http://duckduckgo.com/bangs</a>.<p>Bangs essentially lets you search directly on websites like Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, Amazon, Mozilla Developer Network, Arch Wiki and many many websites. Its a really great productivity hack.
Dear Google: you are becoming less likable by the second. For a long time you were the champion of user experience and you forced a lot of sleazy products to change or go out of business. Recently, it's like you've systematically discovered every dark pattern your evangelists once scorned. Please, please flip the don't be evil bit back to on. Evil Google is not very likable.
> 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.<p>> 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.<p>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.
> 2022-03-29<p>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.
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:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30167865" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30167865</a><p>Within the last week or so I also noticed that the YouTube homepage -- the content shown at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/</a> when I'm signed in -- has switched to a mostly empty page demanding I turn on YouTube watch history:<p><a href="https://imgur.com/a/45PxHZm" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/45PxHZm</a><p>They literally removed all the content from the YouTube homepage in order to beg for permission to track history...<p>It's kind of hard to believe these moves are a coincidence. There seems to be a shift across multiple products, specifically Maps, YouTube, and Google Workspace.
People seem to forget that even if you pay Google you aren't their actual user, you are just a bundle of data to be sold for ad revenue. Paying, it seems, just makes you more valuable because now Google knows you pay for services and that signal is worth more for ad targeting.
It's not just Google, all the American companies are doing it.<p>I've noticed for years how my privacy settings on Android, as well as macOs and Windows 10, occasionally revert to the most privacy-invading choice.
the more devices services and programs i use, the more time i seem to spend, justifiably, monitoring, fiddling, and concealing. it's like living with people who try to watch you on the bathroom.<p>its disgusting and vile and exhausting and creepy. nothing about this even remotely approaches 'okay', and we need to stop. I've heard more than a few kids under 25 or so who don't remember when technology was just fun say things like 'uncle ted was right', and given their experience, i can't really fault them.
Yet, we all use their services, willingly or not. Need a class action and rigorous approach this problem. Else, this reinforcing loop will just continue
It's a good year for me :)<p>I've already moved mails away from Google, files from Drive etc.<p>So Google account I have mainly for phone (I want BB10 back!) and YT :/
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:<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/sim12o/well_fuck" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/sim12o/well_...</a>
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...!
tldr; Automatically switching user privacy settings from "off" back to "on" is unacceptable. Tracking company Google does it anyway, says you're misunderstanding.