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Google One VPN will be discontinued

9to5google.com

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Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#11

Post by lxgr »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Everything Google does has privacy invasion baked into it. So it's really kinda insulting for them to offer a product where the central purpose is to provide *privacy*. Apparently, the public is not quite as dumb as they thought.

I think this was actually a somewhat compelling product: Sure, Google tracks users where they can, but for this they were explicitly claiming to be using authentication via blinded signature tokens, and to not log any traffic.

Google has a lot more to lose from a privacy or breach of contract lawsuit than a random shady VPN operation that can just disappear when word gets out that they're actually feeding everything to data brokers, and open shop under a different name the next day.

Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#13

Post by lxgr »

kkarakk wrote: post #12

The service didn't even work if you signed up for google one from most of the world and then they discontinue it coz of low usage? Pretty funny stuff

To be fair, there are some legal implications to providing VPNs in many countries, since they're effectively making you look a lot like an ISP from a legal and practical point of view.

Google isn't a random fly-by-night VPN operator that can just ignore subpoenas and takedown notices, so they probably did some cost-reward analysis per country before offering it there.

They could have bypassed some (but probably not all) of that by offering cross-country VPN nodes, but I suspect that given their size they didn't want to get into the business of "jurisdiction shopping", nor did they have any interest in landing on various media companies' "geo-bypassing VPN IP range" block lists.

Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#14

Post by jqpabc123 »

lxgr wrote: post #11
jqpabc123 wrote: post #5

Everything Google does has privacy invasion baked into it. So it's really kinda insulting for them to offer a product where the central purpose is to provide *privacy*. Apparently, the public is not quite as dumb as they thought.

I think this was actually a somewhat compelling product: Sure, Google tracks users where they can, but for this they were explicitly claiming to be using authentication via blinded signature tokens, and to not log any traffic. Google has a lot more to lose from a privacy or breach of contract lawsuit than a random shady VPN operation that can just disappear when word gets out that they're actually feeding everything…

* ... authentication via blinded signature tokens*

Hand waving, smoke and mirrors.

When the authentication and the service are both run by the same company on their servers, a huge potential exists for there to be nothing really "blind" about.

As many, many examples show; Google = Privacy Invasion. It's way too late for them to try and establish privacy credibility.

Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#15

Post by lxgr »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #14
lxgr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this was actually a somewhat compelling product: Sure, Google tracks users where they can, but for this they were explicitly claiming to be using authentication via blinded signature tokens, and to not log any traffic. Google has a lot more to lose from a privacy or breach of contract lawsuit than a random shady VPN operation that can just disappear when word gets out that they're actually feeding everything…

* ... authentication via blinded signature tokens* Hand waving, smoke and mirrors. When the authentication and the service are both run by the same company on their servers, a huge potential exists for there to be nothing really "blind" about. As many, many examples show; Google = Privacy Invasion. It's way too late for them to try and establish privacy credibility.

The blind signing part runs locally on your VPN client.

> It's way too late for them to try and establish privacy credibility.

I personally don't think it's a good idea to trust any corporation to be a good or bad custodian of your personal data based on their public image or even past actions. These values can change very quickly, especially in publicly-traded corporations.

What matters much more than self-proclaimed statements or public perception are economic incentives, and I believe Google has quite strong incentives to not get hit by huge fines for violating the GDPR and other privacy regulations.

Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#16

Post by Havoc »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #3

I’m convinced the Google treadmill of products that are created, shut down, and recreated is due to a promotion oriented culture. They must be getting rewarded for launches, not for building useful products or successful businesses.

The other explanation I’ve seen is that the 20% time leads to lots of small products without much of an overarching biz strategy

Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#17

Post by snotrockets »

Havoc wrote: post #16
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #3

I’m convinced the Google treadmill of products that are created, shut down, and recreated is due to a promotion oriented culture. They must be getting rewarded for launches, not for building useful products or successful businesses.

The other explanation I’ve seen is that the 20% time leads to lots of small products without much of an overarching biz strategy

20% time was also killed by Google (even if not officially)

Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#18

Post by soraminazuki »

sander1095 wrote: post #6

This impacts me quite a bit as I use this often. I pay for Google One for the extra storage and VPN. Now the VPN is going away but my costs will stay the same. That's absurd to me.

If this wasn't clear before, it's now clear that Google services are unreliable even if they're paid.

Re: Google One VPN will be discontinued

#20

Post by taco_emoji »

Not shocking. Their VPN app sucked ass. A) it randomly disconnected several times a day, and B) it had no "kill switch" option which would block all traffic when the VPN went down. So my connection was frequently unprotected throughout the day.
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