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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#231

Post by cebert »

riverguardian wrote: post #70

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 trac…

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.

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

#232

Post by matkoniecz »

riverguardian wrote: post #120
twhb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

> 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.

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

#233

Post by microtonal »

Ensorceled wrote: post #205
cik wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 surprising…

> I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses. What are you switching to? I'm in the same situation of a couple of family groups and a couple of small businesses on GSuite and looking for alternatives.

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

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

#234

Post by w1nk »

tremon wrote: post #206
0xy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Inte…

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

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

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

#235

Post by oblio »

extr wrote: post #134
xg15 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, o…

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

What about... >?

Shocking, right?

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

#236

Post by lawn »

richardles wrote: post #129
riverguardian wrote: post #70

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 trac…

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 pro…

> 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.

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

#237

Post by oblio »

jacquesm wrote: post #198
pingsl wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed. Why is this? The company should have control over how employees use the company assets.

Because the number of companies that disable this company wide is large enough that google believes that by muddying the waters like this employees will give them the loophole they need to get back at that data. The proper way to do this is: Admin level: - default to off - options - enable - disable - allow the user to set this - default to off - default to on

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

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

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

#238

Post by xdennis »

tonfreed wrote: post #17
uslic001 wrote: post #9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#239

Post by Fiahil »

riverguardian wrote: post #70

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 trac…

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 ?

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