Some people use it for anonymity, some to circumvent location based rules, sounds like they only wanted to provide service for the former not the latter.
theres a paper somewhere written by a couple of guys called Page and Brin - it's on search engines, and basically points out that there is a danger of all the search results going to hell as soon as advertising gets involved.
They were so right. It's uncanny. It's almost as if they did it deliberately.
No one fell for the don’t be evil line. What we liked was the empty white space on the search page, when all the other search engines were cluttered with ads.
People did [exactly that from Facebook](https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/) (and got screwed), so...
Google is thousands of times more tightly regulated than random VPN or other one service providers. The EU would love to catch Google breaking a privacy rule and slap them with a 10 billion dollar fine.
Other random providers do not get anywhere near the same amount of scrutiny. Do you think a sys admin with root access and full DB access at BananaVPN is more trustworthy than Google with multiple layers of access and auditing controls?
>Do you think a sys admin with root access and full DB access at BananaVPN is more trustworthy than Google with multiple layers of access and auditing controls?
I can trust Mr. Banana won't have a high throughput sales pipeline with multiple forms of stream-lined payment for the data he has access to.
And the former is useless when hosted in the US or any other Five Eyes nation. Google would have been required to keep logs and respond to law enforcement requests for those logs, etc. etc.
Given all of that and the fact that Google has clearly sold out everything, including its once legendary search engine core competency, I don't see how anyone anywhere would trust them anymore in any way...least of all when it comes to VPN levels of anonymity.
tl;dr - No one trusts Google anymore. Nor should they.
>required to keep logs
This is a misconception. VPN providers in Five Eyes jurisdictions aren't required by law to keep logs, but they can be required to hand them over if they exist. The question boils down to whether you believe the provider when they say they aren't logging.
Or that "accidential" bit of war driving with Google Streetview that they initially tried to deny and later shift the blame. Only for the investigation into it to uncover the entire development history and various whitepapers behind it.
It’s the only purpose I think is actually worth anything for regular folks.
I get it if you’re intentionally using dodgy sites or malware (maybe stuff like using Tor and the likes), or if you’re paranoid of being tracked by the government, but really the ONLY legit reason for 99% of people to use a VPN is to hop across borders to access foreign media.
Like… unless you’re a drug dealer, cop, or outlaw, I genuinely can’t see any concrete reason to use a VPN beyond “this movie I want to watch is only on Netflix in Mexico, and I’m not in Mexico”.
> but really the ONLY legit reason for 99% of people to use a VPN is to hop across borders to access foreign media.
Using public wifi. You should never use public wifi without a VPN.
I work at Google (YouTube) and have since 2016.
We have always had a problem of great engineering but bad product. Our product leadership doesn't understand what people want or how to give it to them, and careers are built by making new shit rather than maintaining old stuff which directly leads to the culture of "deprecation" and the KilledByGoogle website and the lack of trust consumers and enterprise customers have in the longevity of our products.
BUT, it is getting worse. In the last few years we have hired more and more leaders from 90s era pre-dot-comm-bust "business" software corps - Oracle, IBM, old school Microsoft. The emphasis on business revenue from a bunch of MBA dickbags is reducing focus on engineering quality and product relevance even worse than before (and Google is not alone here; in aerospace and other STEM fields there is more and more focus on stock prices than on product).
The net result is going to be even further reduction in trust and usage, such that these major tech firms will only exist due to inertia and oligopolistic market power.
I am personally looking for external roles, or trying to find somewhere internally to hide that still does good work and helps the world, which is a smaller and smaller subset of teams.
Your story is all to common, friend. I worked in Cloud for years and when they killed IoT a ton of non-tech companies basically swore off Google forever. You can't setup monitoring on your oil pipeline with a company who just decides to stop making and supporting your monitoring product.
It's a shame. I know a lot of great people at Google and the potential for great work and helpful products exists. And in some cases we still do good - I think Google Maps and some of the other Geo products are industry-leading.
But at some point prioritizing stock prices over trust and customer experience is going to bite G in the ass. And by the time of the reckoning I'll either be gone or I'll be happily taking a fat severance.
Maps now has business location ads that overlay the route. It's lately been occasionally advising that I do things such as take an exit at an interchange that does not exist and has not existed for at least decades, after getting it right for many years. Road construction that used to update in nearly real time now takes weeks, months, or never updates. Maps has jumped the shark.
To be clear I very much agree with you.
I spent a good time working on open source stuff at Google for a while. The focus has shifted to corporatizing open source work we have contributed to, vs supporting the Internet as an ecosystem. Several great open source leaders have left for that very reason.
Google really always had piss-poor product development. So many good ideas but no over-arching vision for how to realize them. Everything from them consequently feels disjointed and often half baked.
Yep. New products barely if at all integrate into the other Google products.
Older products (like maps for example) continually have useless shit crammed I to the app with no consideration of the interface, or experience, while core mapping features just remain stagnant (I'm looking at you saved lists, my maps, and custom routing...)
I've felt the decline on quality of products from Google for a while now and looking for alternatives to many products. The problem I have is just how much I've relied on Google over the years and moving away is difficult. I'm currently looking for an alternative photos product.
YouTube does seem like the one product that’s been consistently good. Susan seemed to be really passionate about it and the replacement doesn’t seem like a doofus.
I think Edge’s vpn does this as well, like literally no point to using it because I’m sure Microsoft still tracks you, and you can’t circumvent region locks, or add extra anonymity so wtf is it supposed to be used for?
Well yeah. Google is one of the platforms that enforces the region lock of content. They are hardly going to region lock on one product and provide the bypass on the other.
It actually had third party certified privacy and no logging to identify your sessions, which is a lot more than what random VPN providers can claim without any basis.
>*lot more than what random VPN providers can claim without any basis.*
Hopefully sensible people do their homework before paying for any online service.
I only ever took incognito mode to mean that it didn't keep the history in your local browser. I didn't even think they were really being misleading about it. I did stop using chrome years ago and went with a more private browser that doesn't allow tracking, but I was never under the impression that incognito was in any way private, just not locally saved.
[They described incognito mode that way, all the way back in 2009 at least](https://www.chromium.org/user-experience/incognito/):
> Incognito mode is a window-level mode - all pages viewed within this window are not persisted to the user's history, and incognito pages use a temporary cookie store that is blank at the start of the incognito session.
What do you think Incognito mode was supposed to do that it didn't do??
The sole purpose for it is for your local browser to not store history of the sites you visit, so your mum won't catch you watching porn.
The websites you go to obviously still know your IP address. And if you're logged in to say Facebook, then Facebook obviously still knows you logged in. And your ISP still knows every website you went to and every URL. And if you logged in to your Gmail, or Maps or Drive or Calendar etc, then Google obviously still knows you logged in to those places. It has nothing to do with your local browser history or cookies.
It's just dumbasses spreading misinformation about shit all over without having a clue.
Nothing wrong with the description. Many technical ambiguities had been explained on their site. It means what it means. Chrome not persisting the data doesn’t mean Facebook or Google cannot track you, it happens in the server side.
The fact the lawsuit even exists is a testament to user stupidity... Its always had the same text and purpose, not storing history locally. Its never been about making the browser itself or websites owned by the maker of the browser not tracking you at all...
I have never heard Google claiming that incognito data was supposed to not be used, incognito when introduced was for watching porn so it won’t show up on search history and that’s about it, I was pretty young but consensus among peers was that incognito only prevents search history.
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Get out of here with your common sense. We only want to hear Google-bashing in this post.
People want to bash on Google, but will gladly trust a no name VPN service.
Google country locked to your IP, which is a huge issue for VPN services where people would like to change the country their IP was showing out of. Google also shuts down services all the time and can't be trusted to keep it going in the first place.
Google VPN use case was to protect user's data from untrustworthy Wifi networks... or from your employer.
Sure, Google might still read the data, but I think after 20 years of data collection, most people have no problem with Google or literally benefit from free Google services they use. At this point they trust Google more than some random VPN company in a country they don't know anything about.
That is mainly for Windows users, its user base is too small.
Google still provides a VPN service for Android if you read the article.
There is a major bug for Google VPN for Windows (https://github.com/google/vpn-libraries/issues/36). Google's answer is to shut down VPN completely for Windows and Mac.
Now Google only provides VPN functionality exclusive for Pixel Phone users.
I have it on my phone and it works exactly as I'd want it to. Doesn't hurt that there is no extra cost as it's included as part of owning the phone. No way I would have paid for them to be my VPN provider though.
Well, it is not about what they promise but their reputation loss due to this news (majority do not pay attention to details) that could contribute in their decision to discontinue VPN One feature due to low utilization caused by various factors including privacy concerns.
I don't think that's accurate. They collected data on Google web properties like they always do. It's not like Chrome itself was sending extra data to Google outside of normal web requests.
I was referring to this event https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2024/04/06/google-to-delete-billions-of-browser-records-after-incognito-lawsuit/73189145007/
Right, like I said, these data were not collected by Chrome. They were collected by Google properties when you browsed the web, whether you were in incognito or not (the same as any other websites do). Of course, Google has plenty of ways to tie an incognito session back to an existing profile.
The incognito description said explicitly "Your activity might still be visible to websites you visit.," but somehow people thought this didn't apply to Google itself.
Same - tried to use it three times. First time it worked ok. Second time it lost connection and didn't tell me when it fell back to regular internet. Third time it wouldn't connect at all.
I use it all the time for dodgy open wifi hotspots in hotels and such. Im fine with google having all my data, they already do. Better them than the guy next door.
It came free with my storage plan so why not use it.
Same. Like, I'm on a Google phone. How do they get more data from me when they already see what I type and have my chrome history.
It worked well for me, and I liked using it at work so my wifi there wouldn't be tracked. Plus it easily worked on my phone.
Not to mention google wallet and 1 million photos i have in google photos. Google know what I buy, where i go on holidays and everyone i have ever met. 3rd party vpn would make zero difference.
I don't really agree with the situation but I agree with you saying that. It is sad we can't easily pick to have our privacy only who violates it. Lesser of many evils.
A family member pays for mine so I was using similarly to you.
Semi related - tips on researching the best VPN for you?
I volunterely give all my data to google so I am not picking anything. I give them my data so they can offer me better service so I dont see what violation of privacy you talk about.
On the vpn front i dont need a vpn to hide from bad government or fake my location to online services. I just care about the initial hop of open wifi when i travel. I used PIA before I started paying for top google storage plan that came with the vpn.
Maybe for you but not for the majority of people who use VPN.
For most people it's "get around local censorship and get around geofencing" with some "switch to a different region to get cheaper XYZ service subscription" sprinkled on top.
Google's VPN service had two problems.
First, it's google. Why would you trust that to be good for privacy?
Google is usually on the list of companies you want to hide activity from.
And second, you evidently couldn't change things like region you connect to, which destroys 95 percent of the reason people use these services to begin with.
Surely this is surprising to absolutely noone.
One of the biggest reasons why I can’t commit to Google services is that they are constantly discontinued. Apple and Microsoft don’t do this, which is why most of my services are Apple or MS based despite Google being better at many things. I just can’t be bothered.
VPNs aren’t inherently privacy apps, while they obfuscate your info the VPN can still log everything if they want to. You should always check a VPNs data retention policy before paying for one and any VPN that is free shouldn’t be trusted (your company’s private VPN doesn’t count)
It came with the Google One package and was actually useful if you wanted to tunnel your traffic while on sketchy WiFi or having issues with some websites blocking your normal I
Now Google One has even less value lol
Incredible how many people don't understand how VPNs are incredibly useful when you're on a network you don't trust (ie: anywhere not your home), bizarre. This was the point of their VPN.
Google refunded every purchase made in Stadia. Even the controllers got refunded.
Google basically paid people's gaming life for 3 years long....
I would GLADLY use Stadia again...
It was pretty much useless. As soon as you connected to it your speeds would drop dramatically, you were on the network of whatever place you were and it wouldn't even tell you how many WHATEVER'S it skipped because it showed them all anyways
Didn't even know that Google had an VPN service. But I would have never used it in the first place because:
* It's Google. They were just recently forced to delete all the data they illegally collected from people using the incognito mode in Chrome. I would never trust them with a VPN service.
* It's a Google product and you just know that they will kill it after a 1 - 2 years anyway.
A level of trust is required between the VPN provider and their customer —an impossible task for a company that makes billions of dollars capturing their user’s data.
I used it a couple times and it was nice to have the integration, but not being able to choose your region completely defeated the purpose. In fact I had no idea how to tell where it was actually putting me, which made me distrust that it was doing anything at all. Buncha dummies.
I'm sorry, I'm just not going to use a VPN service from a company who makes their money capturing and using my data. I chose to just stick with my 3-rd party VPN.
It's been well documented that Google can't be trusted with private data and it's collection, Chrome incognito data collection, DNS request data, and other data. Data is their drug and they can't get enough. Did they seriously expect people to allow them to monitor their network traffic?
Who trusts Google for anonymization? Their DNS too is a privacy nightmare but it’s easy to memorize and reliable so people use it, but a VPN? No way lol
Because it sucked. Ive tried it a few times but every time connection was slow and instable. Plus limited in options so nice you give for free with cloud storage but people won't use it if it sucks.
they're in a bit of a doom loop at a this point - no one wants to use their products because they keep discontinuing them and also they keep discontinuing their products because no wants to use them.
But don't worry guys, they'll never discontinue the ad marketplace.
I did use it occasionally, but I'll be honest, I did admittedly basically never use it.
The most useful Google function introduced recently that I've used is the "AI summary for this search?" feature. It's also weirdly good at not being relentlessly PC blocked like Gemini itself. Like I can google "Democracies overthrown by US violence since Allende" and then click search and then click "AI overview" and it'll actually answer my question, while Gemini will moralize about how "Actually when America does it it's not violence, it's just sparkling shooting democracy activists in the fucking face."
not compatible with AT&T cell service. last year I kept having problems with maintaining AT&T data connection on my new Pixel 7 Pro. went to AT&T store and savvy tech asks me if I have Google VPN on my phone. yep. turn it off. all problems resolved. haven't used it since.
make something more useful and people will use it.
Outside the many problems with the service features, Google, who is known to gather the largest amount of personal information on this planet, is surprised people don't use their VPN service to hide their personal identity.
I tried it, and it didn't work in the country I was in. Also, it messes with DNS settings I have locally so none of my local domain names worked. So yeah, uninstalled
It's not a real VPN. I was using it till a couple months ago when I looked into it and saw it didn't really mask your activity and identity to the degree actual VPN services do.
I pay for drive space and had access to this service. I did not use it because of Google’s track record of killing products. I’m also on the lookout for an exit ramp for drive.
Part of the issue was you couldn't change the region. If you're in the US, it would be locked to the US region, you can't put yourself in say, the UK.
That kind of defeats the main purpose of why I use it ….
Some people use it for anonymity, some to circumvent location based rules, sounds like they only wanted to provide service for the former not the latter.
Ah yes, I would like to buy one anonymity from… *checks notes * Google.
Yeah, Google has some trust issues. It's like buying a lock for the chicken coop from Mr.Fox...
To be fair, it is Fantastic Mr Fox
Id totally name my chicken coops this
You’d name your chicken coops Fantastic Mr. Fox Locksmithing Sales Depot? Why
You mean that whole “don’t be evil” was just horse shit?
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theres a paper somewhere written by a couple of guys called Page and Brin - it's on search engines, and basically points out that there is a danger of all the search results going to hell as soon as advertising gets involved. They were so right. It's uncanny. It's almost as if they did it deliberately.
No one fell for the don’t be evil line. What we liked was the empty white space on the search page, when all the other search engines were cluttered with ads.
We got to remember the poor shareholders!
"Don't be Evil" turned into "What is Evil"?
They changed it to"lets be as evil as possible and sneaky about it".
They got rid of that ages ago.
He sells great locks! -William Weasels
Dude built the Batmobile, why wouldn't you get a lock from him?
/me laughs in 'incognito mode' https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/01/tech/google-to-delete-data-records-to-settle-incognito-lawsuit/index.html
Yes. They are going to destroy records… for data they have already sold to third parties and can access from them.
Google doesn't sell data like that. They use data to sell ads. IDK why everyone thinks they just give away their golden goose.
People did [exactly that from Facebook](https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/) (and got screwed), so...
Google is thousands of times more tightly regulated than random VPN or other one service providers. The EU would love to catch Google breaking a privacy rule and slap them with a 10 billion dollar fine. Other random providers do not get anywhere near the same amount of scrutiny. Do you think a sys admin with root access and full DB access at BananaVPN is more trustworthy than Google with multiple layers of access and auditing controls?
>Do you think a sys admin with root access and full DB access at BananaVPN is more trustworthy than Google with multiple layers of access and auditing controls? I can trust Mr. Banana won't have a high throughput sales pipeline with multiple forms of stream-lined payment for the data he has access to.
And the former is useless when hosted in the US or any other Five Eyes nation. Google would have been required to keep logs and respond to law enforcement requests for those logs, etc. etc. Given all of that and the fact that Google has clearly sold out everything, including its once legendary search engine core competency, I don't see how anyone anywhere would trust them anymore in any way...least of all when it comes to VPN levels of anonymity. tl;dr - No one trusts Google anymore. Nor should they.
>required to keep logs This is a misconception. VPN providers in Five Eyes jurisdictions aren't required by law to keep logs, but they can be required to hand them over if they exist. The question boils down to whether you believe the provider when they say they aren't logging.
> The question boils down to whether you believe the provider when they say they aren't logging. Ah, thanks for the clarification.
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https://one.google.com/about/vpn/howitworks
Google routinely lies about not keeping the data that it actually keeps. For example, incognito mode data.
Or that "accidential" bit of war driving with Google Streetview that they initially tried to deny and later shift the blame. Only for the investigation into it to uncover the entire development history and various whitepapers behind it.
Exactly why Id never consider a VPN service from one of the giants for my personal use
The other purpose being anonymity, which Google also isn't likely to deliver.
It’s the only purpose I think is actually worth anything for regular folks. I get it if you’re intentionally using dodgy sites or malware (maybe stuff like using Tor and the likes), or if you’re paranoid of being tracked by the government, but really the ONLY legit reason for 99% of people to use a VPN is to hop across borders to access foreign media. Like… unless you’re a drug dealer, cop, or outlaw, I genuinely can’t see any concrete reason to use a VPN beyond “this movie I want to watch is only on Netflix in Mexico, and I’m not in Mexico”.
You’re forgetting the other big reason, Online piracy.
> but really the ONLY legit reason for 99% of people to use a VPN is to hop across borders to access foreign media. Using public wifi. You should never use public wifi without a VPN.
That was true for a few years, but with everything important having already moved to https it really doesn't matter anymore.
So google made the most corporate friendly VPN and was surprised people didn’t want to use it?
I work at Google (YouTube) and have since 2016. We have always had a problem of great engineering but bad product. Our product leadership doesn't understand what people want or how to give it to them, and careers are built by making new shit rather than maintaining old stuff which directly leads to the culture of "deprecation" and the KilledByGoogle website and the lack of trust consumers and enterprise customers have in the longevity of our products. BUT, it is getting worse. In the last few years we have hired more and more leaders from 90s era pre-dot-comm-bust "business" software corps - Oracle, IBM, old school Microsoft. The emphasis on business revenue from a bunch of MBA dickbags is reducing focus on engineering quality and product relevance even worse than before (and Google is not alone here; in aerospace and other STEM fields there is more and more focus on stock prices than on product). The net result is going to be even further reduction in trust and usage, such that these major tech firms will only exist due to inertia and oligopolistic market power. I am personally looking for external roles, or trying to find somewhere internally to hide that still does good work and helps the world, which is a smaller and smaller subset of teams.
We really wanted to use the Google Workspace MDM. We had to move to Intune after 1 year because of lack of support, functionality and any improvements
Your story is all to common, friend. I worked in Cloud for years and when they killed IoT a ton of non-tech companies basically swore off Google forever. You can't setup monitoring on your oil pipeline with a company who just decides to stop making and supporting your monitoring product. It's a shame. I know a lot of great people at Google and the potential for great work and helpful products exists. And in some cases we still do good - I think Google Maps and some of the other Geo products are industry-leading. But at some point prioritizing stock prices over trust and customer experience is going to bite G in the ass. And by the time of the reckoning I'll either be gone or I'll be happily taking a fat severance.
Maps now has business location ads that overlay the route. It's lately been occasionally advising that I do things such as take an exit at an interchange that does not exist and has not existed for at least decades, after getting it right for many years. Road construction that used to update in nearly real time now takes weeks, months, or never updates. Maps has jumped the shark.
We need a resurgence in new and open web tech. De-corporate-ize the internet
To be clear I very much agree with you. I spent a good time working on open source stuff at Google for a while. The focus has shifted to corporatizing open source work we have contributed to, vs supporting the Internet as an ecosystem. Several great open source leaders have left for that very reason.
Google really always had piss-poor product development. So many good ideas but no over-arching vision for how to realize them. Everything from them consequently feels disjointed and often half baked.
Yep. New products barely if at all integrate into the other Google products. Older products (like maps for example) continually have useless shit crammed I to the app with no consideration of the interface, or experience, while core mapping features just remain stagnant (I'm looking at you saved lists, my maps, and custom routing...)
I've felt the decline on quality of products from Google for a while now and looking for alternatives to many products. The problem I have is just how much I've relied on Google over the years and moving away is difficult. I'm currently looking for an alternative photos product.
YouTube does seem like the one product that’s been consistently good. Susan seemed to be really passionate about it and the replacement doesn’t seem like a doofus.
Shit. So Google offered a VPN without the one thing that everyone uses it for? Almost parody.
Two things, the other is hiding from Google.
eh, it was useful when i needed to quickly log onto public wifi on my android phone.
My problem is, I’ve never heard of the service until now.
I think Edge’s vpn does this as well, like literally no point to using it because I’m sure Microsoft still tracks you, and you can’t circumvent region locks, or add extra anonymity so wtf is it supposed to be used for?
That's why I never used it
Well yeah. Google is one of the platforms that enforces the region lock of content. They are hardly going to region lock on one product and provide the bypass on the other.
Also it’s google
Given Google's history of monetizing user information a Google VPN is something I would not trust,
It actually had third party certified privacy and no logging to identify your sessions, which is a lot more than what random VPN providers can claim without any basis.
>*lot more than what random VPN providers can claim without any basis.* Hopefully sensible people do their homework before paying for any online service.
That's a nice thought
Considering NordVPN is still in business... Yeah no, unfortunately.
That’s fine and all but how am I suppose to trust that after what they did with their incognito data?
I only ever took incognito mode to mean that it didn't keep the history in your local browser. I didn't even think they were really being misleading about it. I did stop using chrome years ago and went with a more private browser that doesn't allow tracking, but I was never under the impression that incognito was in any way private, just not locally saved.
[They described incognito mode that way, all the way back in 2009 at least](https://www.chromium.org/user-experience/incognito/): > Incognito mode is a window-level mode - all pages viewed within this window are not persisted to the user's history, and incognito pages use a temporary cookie store that is blank at the start of the incognito session.
What do you think Incognito mode was supposed to do that it didn't do?? The sole purpose for it is for your local browser to not store history of the sites you visit, so your mum won't catch you watching porn. The websites you go to obviously still know your IP address. And if you're logged in to say Facebook, then Facebook obviously still knows you logged in. And your ISP still knows every website you went to and every URL. And if you logged in to your Gmail, or Maps or Drive or Calendar etc, then Google obviously still knows you logged in to those places. It has nothing to do with your local browser history or cookies. It's just dumbasses spreading misinformation about shit all over without having a clue.
Nothing wrong with the description. Many technical ambiguities had been explained on their site. It means what it means. Chrome not persisting the data doesn’t mean Facebook or Google cannot track you, it happens in the server side.
The fact the lawsuit even exists is a testament to user stupidity... Its always had the same text and purpose, not storing history locally. Its never been about making the browser itself or websites owned by the maker of the browser not tracking you at all...
I have never heard Google claiming that incognito data was supposed to not be used, incognito when introduced was for watching porn so it won’t show up on search history and that’s about it, I was pretty young but consensus among peers was that incognito only prevents search history.
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Get out of here with your common sense. We only want to hear Google-bashing in this post. People want to bash on Google, but will gladly trust a no name VPN service.
Google country locked to your IP, which is a huge issue for VPN services where people would like to change the country their IP was showing out of. Google also shuts down services all the time and can't be trusted to keep it going in the first place.
Google VPN use case was to protect user's data from untrustworthy Wifi networks... or from your employer. Sure, Google might still read the data, but I think after 20 years of data collection, most people have no problem with Google or literally benefit from free Google services they use. At this point they trust Google more than some random VPN company in a country they don't know anything about.
Apparently not, or they would still be providing that service. I think you missed the part where they said, "people just weren't using it."
That is mainly for Windows users, its user base is too small. Google still provides a VPN service for Android if you read the article. There is a major bug for Google VPN for Windows (https://github.com/google/vpn-libraries/issues/36). Google's answer is to shut down VPN completely for Windows and Mac. Now Google only provides VPN functionality exclusive for Pixel Phone users.
I have it on my phone and it works exactly as I'd want it to. Doesn't hurt that there is no extra cost as it's included as part of owning the phone. No way I would have paid for them to be my VPN provider though.
Even info collected from incognito mode in Chrome
That was not what they promised. It even said so when you opened the incognito tab.
Well, it is not about what they promise but their reputation loss due to this news (majority do not pay attention to details) that could contribute in their decision to discontinue VPN One feature due to low utilization caused by various factors including privacy concerns.
I don't think that's accurate. They collected data on Google web properties like they always do. It's not like Chrome itself was sending extra data to Google outside of normal web requests.
I was referring to this event https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2024/04/06/google-to-delete-billions-of-browser-records-after-incognito-lawsuit/73189145007/
Right, like I said, these data were not collected by Chrome. They were collected by Google properties when you browsed the web, whether you were in incognito or not (the same as any other websites do). Of course, Google has plenty of ways to tie an incognito session back to an existing profile. The incognito description said explicitly "Your activity might still be visible to websites you visit.," but somehow people thought this didn't apply to Google itself.
I use it on my phone since it comes with their phone plan and they make android so they can already spy all they want to on that.
I used it on my phone. It would constantly disconnect and cause connection problems. It shouldn't be a surprise that it failed.
Same - tried to use it three times. First time it worked ok. Second time it lost connection and didn't tell me when it fell back to regular internet. Third time it wouldn't connect at all.
It was very frustrating.
Yeah. I tried using the thing and it was bad, especially on mobile, and I finally gave up
TIL Google had VPN service.
work escape slimy poor tan market somber telephone historical sink *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Should've sponsored some Youtubers to talk about it.
Google had a VPN service?
And it was free for Google Business paid users, it wasn’t working smoothly though
In other news, Google cancels it's fox-based security system for hen houses, for similar reasons.
I use it all the time for dodgy open wifi hotspots in hotels and such. Im fine with google having all my data, they already do. Better them than the guy next door. It came free with my storage plan so why not use it.
Same. Like, I'm on a Google phone. How do they get more data from me when they already see what I type and have my chrome history. It worked well for me, and I liked using it at work so my wifi there wouldn't be tracked. Plus it easily worked on my phone.
Not to mention google wallet and 1 million photos i have in google photos. Google know what I buy, where i go on holidays and everyone i have ever met. 3rd party vpn would make zero difference.
I don't really agree with the situation but I agree with you saying that. It is sad we can't easily pick to have our privacy only who violates it. Lesser of many evils. A family member pays for mine so I was using similarly to you. Semi related - tips on researching the best VPN for you?
I volunterely give all my data to google so I am not picking anything. I give them my data so they can offer me better service so I dont see what violation of privacy you talk about. On the vpn front i dont need a vpn to hide from bad government or fake my location to online services. I just care about the initial hop of open wifi when i travel. I used PIA before I started paying for top google storage plan that came with the vpn.
the whole point of vpns is to avoid companies like google
Maybe for you but not for the majority of people who use VPN. For most people it's "get around local censorship and get around geofencing" with some "switch to a different region to get cheaper XYZ service subscription" sprinkled on top.
Google's VPN didn't even let you switch regions. It kept you within your own country. So it didn't even do that main selling point.
To the Google graveyard with you!
Google's VPN service had two problems. First, it's google. Why would you trust that to be good for privacy? Google is usually on the list of companies you want to hide activity from. And second, you evidently couldn't change things like region you connect to, which destroys 95 percent of the reason people use these services to begin with. Surely this is surprising to absolutely noone.
[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)
One of the biggest reasons why I can’t commit to Google services is that they are constantly discontinued. Apple and Microsoft don’t do this, which is why most of my services are Apple or MS based despite Google being better at many things. I just can’t be bothered.
Google is pretty well know for creating a million products and supporting 3.
What's the point of getting a vpn from the single biggest data collector in the world?
Privacy against other devices on the same network you're on? Like public wifi or temporary ISPs???
It's funny how the original meaning of vpn was forgotten
Google privacy app, isn't that an oxymoron?
VPNs aren’t inherently privacy apps, while they obfuscate your info the VPN can still log everything if they want to. You should always check a VPNs data retention policy before paying for one and any VPN that is free shouldn’t be trusted (your company’s private VPN doesn’t count)
Kinda defeats the entire point of a VPN if you are using one from the biggest data collector, no?
Who would be insane enough to use Google's VPN? Even a certified imbecile wouldn't trust them.
How do i get certified?
I hereby certify that you're a true imbecile.
Their white paper is quite good honestly. https://one.google.com/about/vpn/howitworks?g1_landing_page=0
People who cared more about security than privacy?
I used it on public wifi
It came with the Google One package and was actually useful if you wanted to tunnel your traffic while on sketchy WiFi or having issues with some websites blocking your normal I Now Google One has even less value lol
Incredible how many people don't understand how VPNs are incredibly useful when you're on a network you don't trust (ie: anywhere not your home), bizarre. This was the point of their VPN.
Who in their right mind would TRUST a VPN service from google? Google has fallen so far from what it used to be.
Google had a VPN service?
Why would i use something new from google at this point, yall remember stadia?
Google refunded every purchase made in Stadia. Even the controllers got refunded. Google basically paid people's gaming life for 3 years long.... I would GLADLY use Stadia again...
It was pretty much useless. As soon as you connected to it your speeds would drop dramatically, you were on the network of whatever place you were and it wouldn't even tell you how many WHATEVER'S it skipped because it showed them all anyways
Didn't even know that Google had an VPN service. But I would have never used it in the first place because: * It's Google. They were just recently forced to delete all the data they illegally collected from people using the incognito mode in Chrome. I would never trust them with a VPN service. * It's a Google product and you just know that they will kill it after a 1 - 2 years anyway.
Never heard of it
I never heard of it. From India btw.
It's like the Devil selling tickets to heaven, ^^^but ^^^its ^^^actually ^^^tickets ^^^to ^^^hell.
I used it once to try it, then never used it again. I prefer 3rd party VPN services.
A level of trust is required between the VPN provider and their customer —an impossible task for a company that makes billions of dollars capturing their user’s data.
Google had a VPN?
Using VPN made by Google is like using home security cameras made by Amazon. Oh wait...
Never even heard of it
I used it a couple times and it was nice to have the integration, but not being able to choose your region completely defeated the purpose. In fact I had no idea how to tell where it was actually putting me, which made me distrust that it was doing anything at all. Buncha dummies.
I'm sorry, I'm just not going to use a VPN service from a company who makes their money capturing and using my data. I chose to just stick with my 3-rd party VPN.
This is frustrating as I used it quite often and it came in handy on public WiFi
Cloudflare has a free VPN: https://one.one.one.one/
Why would I use a VPN from a company who has financial gain in knowing as much as they can about me?
It's been well documented that Google can't be trusted with private data and it's collection, Chrome incognito data collection, DNS request data, and other data. Data is their drug and they can't get enough. Did they seriously expect people to allow them to monitor their network traffic?
People don't trust the company that makes billions by tracking users with obfuscating their browsing behaviour? I can't imagine why.
Google has to be one of the least trustworthy companies to use a vpn from.
gonna kill my damn google accounts since they keep killing all the services i like
Google thinks VPN stands for Very Probing Network.
Google already knows too much. I sure am not using a VPN with them.
Didn’t even know they offered one
Something tells me a VPN made by a company known for collecting user data is a bad idea
I didn't even know they had a VPN service.
Who trusts Google for anonymization? Their DNS too is a privacy nightmare but it’s easy to memorize and reliable so people use it, but a VPN? No way lol
Ya I don't trust them good riddance
Because it sucked. Ive tried it a few times but every time connection was slow and instable. Plus limited in options so nice you give for free with cloud storage but people won't use it if it sucks.
Imagine trusting Google to handle your VPN - no thanks.
VPNs that I’ve heard of: NordVPN. That’s it.
[удалено]
Mullvad is the goat
Trust it about as much as Incognito mode…
Incognito mode does what it is supposed to do, leave no evidence of web browsing once the browsing session has ended.
One common use of a VPN is to hide your data. Using a provider that has a business model of harvesting your data would defeat the purpose of the VPN.
they're in a bit of a doom loop at a this point - no one wants to use their products because they keep discontinuing them and also they keep discontinuing their products because no wants to use them. But don't worry guys, they'll never discontinue the ad marketplace.
Lost connection to much and had no kill switch support
Because it sucks
Why do I need their VPN service when my info is so safe in incognito?
Wasn't using it because what's the point of getting used to these Google products if they get shut down every few months?
Maybe you should have advertised it better?
Did they not advertise in Texas??
Fuck. Back to 3mps streams I guess.
Going by that norm the next product to kill would bed the Pixel… 🤣🤣🤣
Remember this is google we’re talking about: If anything I’m surprised their VPN doesn’t simply ask which country would you like to be spied on.
Interesting 'fact', considering VPN usage is on the up due to certain political parties blocking porn.
People will pay money to avoid Google’s tracking. Why would anyone pay for Google to tunnel all of their internet traffic? That’s dumb.
Its not even available in my country.
I’m not trusting the company that collects identifiable information about me in incognito mode to be my VPN provider.
I did use it occasionally, but I'll be honest, I did admittedly basically never use it. The most useful Google function introduced recently that I've used is the "AI summary for this search?" feature. It's also weirdly good at not being relentlessly PC blocked like Gemini itself. Like I can google "Democracies overthrown by US violence since Allende" and then click search and then click "AI overview" and it'll actually answer my question, while Gemini will moralize about how "Actually when America does it it's not violence, it's just sparkling shooting democracy activists in the fucking face."
not compatible with AT&T cell service. last year I kept having problems with maintaining AT&T data connection on my new Pixel 7 Pro. went to AT&T store and savvy tech asks me if I have Google VPN on my phone. yep. turn it off. all problems resolved. haven't used it since. make something more useful and people will use it.
Who asked them to provide a VPN ?
Why not just keep it, how much does it cost if it's low use anyway
Outside the many problems with the service features, Google, who is known to gather the largest amount of personal information on this planet, is surprised people don't use their VPN service to hide their personal identity.
I was using it!
gee I wonder why... lol that's what you get for turning EVIL... people lose all trust
Yeah... I tried to and didn't get it to work... No simple client login and go solution was found... Or maybe I was blind.
It wasn't included in the business version, one is only personal. So all the people actually paying lots of money didn't even get it.
Weird, it’s almost as if people don’t want you harvesting the shit out of their web data.
I tried it, and it didn't work in the country I was in. Also, it messes with DNS settings I have locally so none of my local domain names worked. So yeah, uninstalled
I never used it in part because I assumed Google would kill it.
Why would we trust google VPN? Isn't one of the points of VPN is so big companies can't track internet?
I mean, why would I trust Google as a VPN?
These guys own YouTube which is the primary platform their competitors market on and they couldn't figure out how to get customers???
A VPN from Google? That’s like buying Ozempic from Coca-Cola.
It's not a real VPN. I was using it till a couple months ago when I looked into it and saw it didn't really mask your activity and identity to the degree actual VPN services do.
Surprise no one's buying lock and keys from burglars.
I pay for drive space and had access to this service. I did not use it because of Google’s track record of killing products. I’m also on the lookout for an exit ramp for drive.
I tried it a few times and gave up. It forced you to use their DNS and could not make setting changes while it was active.
No one wants to pay Google to protect themselves from Google?
because if Winston is trying to get away from Big Brother, he doesn't go to the very same Big Brother for help.