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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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Hmm. That sounds interesting.
goes to investigate
It sounds like that covers Gmail and stuff like that, but at least in this 2022 article, it doesn't sound like it covers Web searches on Google, or YouTube, or Google Maps. That sounds like it's fair game for data-mining.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/confusing-google-workspace-privacy-change-will-re-enable-tracking-for-users/
I actually consider the tracking of my browsing/watching history to be integral to the search experience. It's why when I search for Python, I get results about the programming language and not snakes both in Search and YouTube. Or why Commodore gets me the computer and not naval crap. Or any number of other things that steer their search results towards things in my interests and away from junk I don't care about.
An ad blocker in my browser keeps anything else they're targeting at me through their scraping out of my hair while also blocking a load of what they might learn about me from third party sites, so I'm not terribly bothered what they think they know about me, they're not getting access to the bulk of the stuff I'd consider personal, and the junk they do track is kept so that they can get me results that will matter to me instead of generic crap.
I think there's a general misunderstanding that Google tracks stuff so that they can sell it, when the reality is that they keep it so they know where to target ads (that I never see) and so that they can provide results relevant to my interests so I'll keep coming back to (not) see ads. They don't sell the info they collect, they sell people the ability to run ads against that info. If they were selling the info itself, they'd be killing the golden goose. So long as they're contractually not allowed to look at my mail and files, I'm good with the rest of what they take because it 100% goes into making a better experience for me using their services so long as I'm running Firefox/uBlock.
That said, if you don't want tracking being used to improve your search experience, a Workspace account indeed won't get you 100% away from it. I tried using DDG for a while and I just couldn't hang with it. Its lacking the little dossier that Google has on me made it so that I constantly had to work harder to find what I wanted vs a quick search on Google, and that's what you'd get without the tracking and info collection. It wasn't worth the tradeoff for me, maybe it is for you though?
I don't have a problem with people who are okay with it getting it. I'm not saying that Google shouldn't be allowed to do that, just that it's not what I want.
I use DDG now, as well as some other things like dropping cookies at browser exit. But they aren't really an alternative to, say, YouTube. And...I mean, I've got no problem with Google's services. I just would prefer to pay for them with money rather than with data.
My apologies if I implied that you did, that was not my intent.
Sorry, that was my point though, without the tracking, you're not getting YouTube, or most of Google's services as we know them. The Google secret sauce is that they know enough about their users to curate an experience per user. That's largely why competitors to Google services rarely take off, the competitors lack enough individual user knowledge to make an experience that is better than what Google can offer for most users.
The services more or less are what they are because of the breadth of what and how Google knows to shape the experience for an individual, and that's why Workspace accounts still track what they do. Google would be providing their paying customers with a lesser experience if they genericized everything you're interacting with in those content related services due to a lack of learned data and behaviors per user. Which is probably not what the average user wants if I had to guess?
Heck, even paid YouTube Premium still needs your tracking data or it's just going to show you whatever popular rage bait is trending day to day with the general public? Or maybe just an unfiltered firehose of all the hours of nonsense that is uploaded every minute to the platform? I guess you could treat it as a whitebox video hosting site, but where does the money come from if YouTube can't make guarantees to advertisers that their ads will be seen by people who might care about the ad, and how do the content creators make money if YouTube can't get advertisers on board, and who is making interesting content if they have to pay to host it themselves because advertisers aren't paying that cost for them? I think my point is that if you pull the tracking and user knowledge out of the Jenga tower, the whole thing just crashes down.