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Comment by doctaj | Hacker News Reader

This doesn’t seem like withholding features because you don’t let them process your data, but that they CANT give you these features unless they have the data to do it — like, They obviously need to get your email data to give you flight info in calendar. Am I missing something…?

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Right, I am normally very quick to criticize google with their "privacy" tactics and have largely cut google out of my life...

But this seems... right? and long overdue. If they can't look at your data they can't do these things.

The way they are framing this however, yeah that is a bit shady and would likely encourage more people to allow it. Reminds me of the tactics Facebook tried with the app tracking apple did. But... still.

Now if only google could also ask for the permission of the person sending you the email that would be great, but that is a pipe dream.

The problem is the bundling of consent. I understand they need to use that specific piece of data if I want to use that particular feature, but they could also have given the choice of "Let us use the data for the feature, but nothing beyond that", together with "Use the data for improving the services for everyone" and "Don't use the data for anything", just like it was before.

Instead, they're bundling "Use the data for the functionality" and "Let Google store the data indefinitely, and use for improving any other Google service", which is the part that leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.

For reference, this is the help page the message was linking to: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15604322

Some relevant parts that many comments here seemed to have missed:

> When smart features are on, your data may be used to improve these features [...] To improve our services. If you have turned on any of the smart features settings, we may also process your Workspace Content & Activity to improve these features. [...] Developing new products and features [...] Performing research

Correct. But bundling matters (I have to confirm not only the event forwarding but also Gemini and search features). And the fineprint surely allows them also to do more than just that.

> Am I missing something…?

Yes. You can process data “one time” without further access, you don’t need to use data to train an llm to do those kind of stuff.

Your data is not being used to train an LLM even if you click "yes" to this.

And meta hasn’t pirated the world’s library… it’s business as usual.

And you know this how?

To be fair, can you even know they won't do it if you click "no"?

Disclaimer, I work at Google, but I recommend reading the ToS for Google consumer and business services, and I believe the short version of the policies on this have been documented on the Google blog several times. I can't comment on the policy directly, but encourage you to research it, there's a pretty straightforward answer.

Separately, the industry standard elsewhere appears to be that if you're a free user your data is used for training, and if you're a paying user it's not.

It's so straightforward that you can't comment on it without risking retaliation?

Don't Talk to the Police. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

I am either reading the wrong ToS, or not getting it [1]:

    Permission to use your content
    [...]
    This license is for the limited purpose of:
    [...]
    - developing new technologies and services for Google consistent with these terms

The last item sounds like Google can use my content to train an LLM, no?

[1] https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en-US#toc-content

Do you have a free or paid account? What are the terms for paid accounts?

I had assumed that the GP comment [1] was about both paid and free accounts.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44592213

Workspace has published policies about how the customer's data may be used: https://support.google.com/a/answer/15706919

> Your content is not used for any other customers. Your content is not human reviewed or used for Generative AI model training outside your domain without permission.

And I think the default assumption has to be that those policies are actually followed. If you think they aren't, the burden of proof is on you to show they aren't.

What the OP of that comment and yourself have missed is that Google is not trustworthy enough to give it permission, which the user you're responding to pretty much suggested as a solution (Google should be trustworthy to be given a one-off permission).

The amount of times Google has been caught out doing things they shouldn't be means that no, no one has to prove that it's a reasonable assumption that Google follows policies, not even their own.

It's for you to prove that they can be trusted (good luck with that!).

In that case what do you care if you click yes or no? If you don't trust Google to abide by their own terms what makes you think they'll respect your "no"? Surely at that level of trust you would just stop using their product?

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