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Comment by hastes | Hacker News Reader

I would be more than happy to pay for gmail, google docs, and an entire suite of google products with the absolute guarantee legally that they could not and would not either collect, or sell my information as part of that payment.

I highly doubt that would ever happen though, considering data is the new oil.

Oh well, one can dream.

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It's already possible by moving from a consumer Google account to a G Suite account.

The main difference between consumer Google accounts and G Suites accounts is that G Suite accounts come with an extremely comprehensive (complex, complicated) administration panel which is absolutely overkill for use cases other than managing G Suite users within a company / organization.

But, you can sign up for G Suite as an individual, and most of the default settings will just work out of the box without much customization needed.

You will have issues if you want to use things like Google Home or Google Nest (or any other consumer-only services... Nest thermostats, for example, won't connect to G Suite accounts and only connect to regular Google consumer accounts).

Here's Google's guarantee re: legally not collecting / selling your G Suite data...

> There is no advertising in the G Suite Core Services, and we have no plans to change this in the future. Google does not collect, scan or use data in G Suite Core Services for advertising purposes. [1]

[1] https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-white...

Hmm, I will need to do a bit more research into this.

My only concern is what exactly is the extent of "G Suite Core Services", does that apply to all existing features of Google, the entire entity itself including YouTube/etc, or just the services provided by the G Suite.

I still may do this but if it doesn't include search, YT, etc, it will be a bit disappointing knowing they are double dipping with my subscription and data.

Google Search and YouTube are outside of G Suite, and will still track the user.

https://gsuite.google.com/intl/en/terms/user_features.html

> for advertising purposes.

You got it right there. All other purposed are fair game.

> for advertising purposes

That qualifier leaves a lot open. Without client-side encryption it's just words.

Well, yeah, there's spam detection and similar features that are enabled by not having client-side encryption. If all of the features that are enabled by cloud-based email aren't worth it to you, fine, but most people like them and you have other options.

The “you have other options” closing is unproductive, but I concur that there are plenty of valid (useful) reasons to analyze customer data. Additional features: phishing and virus detection, suspicious account activity, building private search indexes, cataloging photos by vision results, and using user feedback to correct models.

It's a nightmare, don't go down this path.

So much is broken, and backing out is a bigger nightmare.

Here's me failing to get a G Suite to act like a Google Account, and then figuring out just what I can migrate back to Gmail: https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d292906...

Somehow though, I have managed to get 2TB of photo storage for free. The photos are there in full quality, but do not count to storage usage.

If you're brave, there's a path here to unlimited free photo storage.

I would not advise anyone to use G Suite for a personal email address.

>> There is no advertising in the G Suite Core Services, and we have no plans to change this in the future. Google does not collect, scan or use data in G Suite Core Services for advertising purposes. [1]

To me that reads a lot like 'Google does indeed collect, scan, use, read, algorithmically process, mine, analyze, characterize, handle, refine, derive from, and peruse data in G Suite Core Services, but with the primary purpose of doing other stuff with it than direct advertising.'

Sorry, if that's actually not fair this time, but with all the doublespeak about these things for the last decade and a half or so, hedging like that does not inspire confidence.

Your use of "primary" paints in a worse light than it really is. From the quote it sounds like they don't use it period for advertising

I'm inclined to think I just added some honesty. When they've used it in their 'research and development to better understand your preferences and offer you better services' or whatnot, do you seriously believe that isn't to interact with ad targeting and all the other ways they use the models?

Currently. And no current plans to change in the future. But they could change their plans. It's not a "no advertising as long as you keep paying", it's "no advertising as long as we feel like it."

Of course they do. Users expect spam filtering, search, and a bunch of other things that require processing.

Yep, that was exactly my take as well. The statement from Google sounds good at a glance, but absolutely leaves open the possibility that they use the data for 100 other things that aren't _directly_ related to advertisement targeting, but that users might be concerned about.

That exists. Sign up for GSuite for a single seat.

How much does it cost?

$6/month per user. I switched from an email server I personally managed (exim+dovecot) to GSuite a couple years ago.

$12/mo for 1 TB of storage: https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html

If storage isn't a concern (just privacy), $6/mo for 30 GB (double what Gmail gives you for free).

The $12 plan is unlimited; the 1 TB limit isn't enforced.

Do you have a source or have other info on this? I have a G Suite Non-Profit account and while it says the "my drive" had 30 GB of storage, the non-profit license also grants us "shared drives" which grant unlimited storage but only in those shared drives. I was wondering if the 1 TB limit is a similar situation.

As a side-note, Drive File Stream messes up uploading big files/folders due to this: https://support.google.com/nonprofits/thread/13880126?hl=en

>the absolute guarantee legally that they could not and would not either collect, or sell my information as part of that payment.

I don't think that's a strong enough requirement. Google doesn't sell your information (it's too valuable for them to do that). Instead, they use it to profile you for better targeting. So them not selling your information doesn't mean much. The same goes for not "collecting". Even if they don't fingeprint or location track you, they still have access to all your emails which is still a treasure trove of information. You can't tell them not to collect it because they need to to operate a mail service.

The only acceptable solution in my mind is end to end encryption.

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