VPN by Google One

"1. Some minimum logging is performed to ensure quality of service, but your network traffic is never logged and your IP is not associated to your activity."

Even with that fairly well spelled out promise, I trust google about as much as I trust $RANDO_VPN, so... hardly at all?

baskire• 6 years ago

They won’t at the vpn connection but they will elsewhere. And they can design the vpn to make tracking at other layers more possible.

cma• 6 years ago

your IP is not associated to your activity

Does this mean your incoming IP, or your outgoing IP? And if payment info or Google identity is associated with your activity, why would they need to bother associating an IP to your activity?

jeffbee10• 6 years ago

It says that personally-identifying information is not present on the VPN endpoint and no user data is logged, only service metrics with no identifiable information. Specific data logged and not logged appears on page 4 and 5 of the whitepaper.

staplers2• 6 years ago

As with browser/device fingerprinting, I expect "service metrics" to be able to identify users regardless if their name is attached to it.

haecceity• 6 years ago

This is pretty cheap if you don't care about privacy

codezero2• 6 years ago

$10/mo is way more expensive than most VPN offerings. I've been paying something around $2.50/mo for Private Internet Access for years now.

hwbehrens• 6 years ago

The $10 is for the entire services bundle (storage, support, etc). The VPN alone is $1.99.

radicalriddler• 6 years ago

I know he was also referencing the VPN, but this also comes with Drive storage and other "benefits" in the Google ecosystem. I mean, these days terrabytes cost peanuts so it probably doesn't make a difference.

griffoa2• 6 years ago

Why pay $10 to have my ass tracked, when I can have my ass tracked for free

dylan604• 6 years ago

A VPN from Google? Awww hell no. I don't even use their DNS. Did they not learn anything from Facebook's VPN fiasco?

powersnail• 6 years ago

Maybe the rising number of VPN providers is concerning to Google, so it decides to become one.

It you can't beat them, join them!

staplers2• 6 years ago

I wonder how quickly that "we do NOT log" terms and conditions will change after public release.

jandrese• 6 years ago

I wonder if you'll be able to sign up for a GMail account using a Google One endpoint?

jeffbee10• 6 years ago

That's a pretty insightful question. If people use the outbound addresses of these VPNs for disproportionately abusive activities then the reputation of those IPs and netblocks will eventually decline. It could come to pass that you wouldn't be able to establish a accounts from these IPs or, if you did, it would be in some kind of penalty box initially. That would go for all major providers, not just Google accounts.

xnx3• 6 years ago

That's part of the attraction to me. I'd love my VPN activity to blend in with all the other activity (crawlers, etc.) coming from Google.

ProAm• 6 years ago

Never in a million years would I trust google as my VPN provider.

1) No customer support

2) it will probably be cancelled in 18 months

3) they already spy on me enough with search, android, google keyboard, gmail

chickenpotpie2• 6 years ago

Is there really an issue if it gets cancelled? You can just get a new VPN. It’s not like other google products where you’re going to lose data or have to rebuild systems.

kadoban2• 6 years ago

It's still a pain setting up a new one and learning its quirks. If there was a compelling reason otherwise, might be worth it. Can't think of any upside myself, even the price isn't good.

dudus2• 6 years ago

Isn't the point of google one to have some services such as support?

dragonwriter4• 6 years ago

1) No customer support

Google One has customer support. Largely, Google One is paid support Google consumer products,. That's actually one of the main selling points. Since this is a feature of a particular Google One tier, it comes with support.

2) it will probably be cancelled in 18 months

Probably not.

3) they already spy on me enough with search, android, google keyboard, gmail

How would being a VPN (for Android only) provider change that? It doesn't increase Google's ability to spy on you, and it decreases other people's ability to. Which, insofar as your private information is valuable to Google, it makes sense for them to do as effectively as possible, even if you take the most cynical view of their motives.

part1of2• 6 years ago

It doesn't increase Google's ability to spy on you

You're going to have to prove that. Your Android device doesn't send ALL your traffic to Google today. Using this would send ALL your traffic to Google. that 100% means it increases Google's ability to spy on you.

causality0• 6 years ago

Being a paid Google consumer product means absolutely fucking nothing. See also: Revolv, Nest Security, Google Fi customer support.

mankyd2• 6 years ago

You have to pay money for this. One of the features they advertise is: "Premium support on everything Google".

So, no customer support for non-paying customers, but I don't think that applies here.

Justsignedup• 6 years ago

i was just about to say -- now they can just read from your dns directly :) guess don't use 8.8.8.8 either :)

arpa• 6 years ago

1.1.1.1 is faster anyway :)

nabla92• 6 years ago

Since this is service you pay for, and not paid by ads and Google says it will not track, log or sell activity it's probably fine.

admax88q• 6 years ago

PRISM

nabla92• 6 years ago

Fortunately Intelligence services won't provide their snooping services for law enforcement. You can use torrent, and stay anonymous from everyone else.

Btw. other VPN services are not secure from intelligence services either. If anything NordVPN and others get extra scrutiny and monitoring allocated for them.

iJohnDoe5• 6 years ago

Google, is that you?

NiceWayToDoIT2• 6 years ago

What is next VPN by NSA ? :) "Don't worry we already know everything about you, it is easier this way" :)

cm21872• 6 years ago

VPN by RIAA

cblconfederate2• 6 years ago

No, it's "You know, we 've been spying on you for years for free. You 're boring, how about we finally make some money out of it? Pay up"

panarky• 6 years ago

I trust a VPN from Google far more than others, with the possible exception of a VPN I set up myself.

iJohnDoe5• 6 years ago

Google, is that you?

Tanath2• 6 years ago

What does the VPN log?
In order to provide peace of mind for our users that their activity is private from the VPN operator and from potential attackers, VPN by Google One does not log user activity on the network or other information that could reveal personally identifiable information about them. The following data is NOT logged by the VPN for a given user:

● Network traffic, including DNS

● IP addresses of the devices connecting to the VPN

● Bandwidth utilized by an individual user

● Connection timestamps by user

laverya• 6 years ago

So if I'm reading that correctly, they DO log who's using which IP address at which time. Which makes sense for abuse tracking, but means this really isn't the service to use for torrents.

EDIT: actually, from the whitepaper [0] it sure looks like they don't even get that much - you authenticate with one set of servers and then get a token to pass to the VPN tunnel servers via 'RSA Blind Signing', and so the tunnel servers never know the account that they're proxying data for. That's actually pretty awesome, if the service as implemented matches the service as described.

0: https://www.gstatic.com/subscriptions/marketing_page/vpn/whi...

armindou52• 6 years ago

Lol, good one :D

ikeboy• 6 years ago

I trust VPN providers that have been asked in court to provide data and refused because they don't log more than I trust Google not to log here.

ebg13• 6 years ago

Privacy and security is core to everything we make.

Is this Poe's law in action?

commandlinefan• 6 years ago

Their privacy and security, not yours.

rubyfan2• 6 years ago

I’ll leave this here for convenience of the next reader...

Poe’s law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

jeffbee10• 6 years ago

Does this differ in any way from the VPN you get from Google Fi, that launched in 2018?

dragonwriter4• 6 years ago

It probably differs in that you don't need to be on Fi, which is a pretty major difference.

jeffbee10• 6 years ago

That's what I was getting at. It makes Fi slightly less sticky for me if I am also going to get the VPN feature with the Google One that I also pay for.

Osiris• 6 years ago

What is Google One? Is this the service formally known as Google Apps or some other service? I find it hard to keep track of all their products because they change so much.

mankyd2• 6 years ago

Google One is essentially paying for more storage on Drive, I think? I am not sure what else it comes with.

kwefnrjtgry• 6 years ago

You also get more storage for Gmail and Google Photos (if you didn't enable compression), occasional discounts/free trials for paid Google services and ability to speak to "Google experts" if you have a problem.

dragonwriter4• 6 years ago

What is Google One?

Google One is Google's paid-storage-plus-premium-support-for-consumer-products service.

You could view it as, in an imprecise way, the consumer counterpart to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite, formerly Google Apps.)

btashton• 6 years ago

I wonder if this is the same VPN technology they have been using with Google Fi for public WiFi access points

https://support.google.com/fi/answer/9040000

yunohn• 6 years ago

Google will never use the VPN connection to track, log or sell your browsing activity

But Google doesn't need your browsing history via the VPN connection. It only needs you to continue using the same browser you normally do, so that they can do their normal cookie tracking for Ads...

n_io• 6 years ago

This is farcical. I actually thought this was a title from an article off The Onion at first.

unknown2374• 6 years ago

What if people use VPNs to avoid being tracked by Google.

wmf2• 6 years ago

Then they're doing it wrong and should be using a cookie blocker instead.

dataflow• 6 years ago

The whitepaper they link to on the bottom might be more interesting: https://www.gstatic.com/subscriptions/marketing_page/vpn/whi...

3guk• 6 years ago

Unless I’m mistaken it just appears to be for Android phones ? I guess I can see some value in it, but will no doubt be heading for the Google graveyard in 18-24months !

xnx3• 6 years ago

"iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon"

txsoftwaredev• 6 years ago

It's been included with their Google Fi service for a while. Unless they are planning on killing Google Fi their VPN service is going to stick around I would assume. But they did just kill off my nest secure I bought, which was very disappointing.

jeffbee10• 6 years ago

It says iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon. Not ChromeOS though?

cblconfederate2• 6 years ago

aka Surveillance As-A-Service

yamrzou• 6 years ago

At least they are being honest, it's "Increase your online security" instead of "Increase your online privacy" :)

uluyol• 6 years ago

I wonder how this compares to Cloudflare's WARP product [1].

[1] https://1.1.1.1/

ogre_codes• 6 years ago

Even if you assume they do honor their promise to not tie any user accounts to the traffic, this would provide Google valuable traffic data.

chickenpotpie2• 6 years ago

I find it strange that they’re tying this VPN to a subscription with drive, gmail, and google photos. Who cares if the VPN logs are anonymizes if I’m using the VPN to upload all my files and send emails to the same account as the VPN?

prima-facie2• 6 years ago

Google will never use the VPN connection to track, log or sell your browsing activity¹

I like the honesty here. Oftentimes you learn more about someone's intention by paying attention to the omissions.

tatersolid• 6 years ago

So you think Google is admitting they will track, log, and sell non-browsing traffic history?

That seems unlikely.

prima-facie2• 6 years ago

The emphasis was on "VPN connection". They won't use the VPN connection, but they will use everything else.

nuker• 6 years ago

Will this one trigger Unknown Device alarms in Gmail as other VPNs do?

ucha• 6 years ago

I understand why no one would want to trust Google and after Snowden's revelations, I don't see why anyone should.

But when it comes to the largest VPNs such as ExpressVPN or Nord VPN, it is impossible to tell who is truly behind them. You cannot put a name on physical person in charge which is very worrying. And since the NSA is known to use front companies to spy on people [1], why couldn't they be behind all these other VPNs? At least, we know who runs Google.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131016033046/http://www.foreig...

jeffbee10• 6 years ago

Privacy enthusiasts often seem blind to this risk. I think it's quite likely that virtually all of these VPN providers are run by either state agencies or organized criminals. As the person who personally ran almost all Tor exits for a brief period in the early 2000's, I am here to tell you that if you cannot definitely identify the operator of your VPN or proxy service, then you probably should not use it.

sufehmi• 6 years ago

THIS.

I can not believe how many people just blindly recommend VPN like some silver bullet.

Using untrustworthy VPN as a privacy solution is like jumping from the fire into the pavement 20 stories below.

Tanath2• 6 years ago

Snowden's revelation that the NSA was in Google's network had their engineers pissed, and they immediately changed their architecture to make it more secure, encrypting internal connections. That doesn't make me want to use them less. And Snowden was compromised by Russia even before he went there.

dzhiurgis3• 6 years ago

NordVPN is incorporated in Caymans or smth like that. Partly to protect itself from all the legal stuff. In reality it's not huge secret it's real name is Tesonet from Vilnius, Lithuania (which has solid legal system and collaborates with FBI, CIA, etc).

armindou52• 6 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's based in Panama and being a global brand, NordVPN must have offices in a lot of locations, but it's main one is in Panama, which is a pro data privacy country. Moreover, even if some security agency would ask for user data, Nord does not keep logs and has most of its servers operate in RAM only.

riyakhanna1983• 6 years ago

I'm confused. If the product targets tech savvy customers, does Google not already know its reputation among the group?

xnx3• 6 years ago

I'm not sure the vocal Google hater comments are representative of tech savvy customers. It regularly ranks at the top of best-regarded brands lists.

iJohnDoe5• 6 years ago

Google, is that you?

lenitabinol• 6 years ago

I pay $3/month for NordVPN, but many IPs are blocked from making Google searches. I wonder if this will be compatible with Puppeteer/Playwright

randompwd• 6 years ago

Under the heading Security you can trust, they list:

Google will never use the VPN connection to track, log, or sell your browsing activity¹

I can't wait for that term of contract to slyly disappear and be replaced by more confusing and obfuscated terminology in, what, maybe 36-ish months?

tucif• 6 years ago

From the linked pdf in the footnotes, looks like they are rolling their own network protocol:

"At launchtime, the VPN protocol will be a Google proprietary protocol; however, to ensure a high throughput while minimizing battery consumption, we will soon adopt IPsec as the data tunnel protocol due to its native support in Android.

We may eventually use other protocols, such as Wireguard, as their native support improves or on platforms where no specific protocols have a specific advantage."

rvz• 6 years ago

Coming soon: Increase your online security with the VPN by Google One

Translation: Coming Soon: Tell us all about yourself and everything you do by signing up to our new service Google One. It comes with a VPN! Trust us, we won't tell!

iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon

It seems that some think you can fool people all the time with 'services' like this but companies like Google don't ever learn from their own mistakes. [0] [1] Phrases like 'Privacy and security is core to everything we make.' is another snake-oil tagline which is another branded trap. Not falling for this one.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/apple-bans-facebook-vpn/

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da...

swiley• 6 years ago

> iOS, Windows, and Mac coming soon

Why does all this crap need it's own app? We have standard protocols for this and some of them are actually very good.

traveler01• 6 years ago

People use VPNs to run away from companies like Google...

iJohnDoe5• 6 years ago

Can’t upvote this enough.

pcglue• 6 years ago

We wouldn't need this VPN if Google didn't suck up all our information in the first place.

mark_l_watson2• 6 years ago

I am not surprised by the level of criticism in the comments here.

However, paid Google services may be cancelled but they have terms of service.

For example, Google Workplaces (used to be called GSuite) states that they use none of your data for advertising and make privacy claims. I am a relatively new customer and I believe it. On the other hand, there are good alternatives like ProtonMail and FastMail for people who don’t trust Google.

I have been paying for both ProtonMail and FastMail for quite a while, but I find my personal workflow better with Google Workplaces: things like automatic email and calendar integration and also Cloud Search that lets me search every digital artifact in my life from one place.

What finally convinced me was that both my former employer CapitalOne and also my current employer Olive AI trust Google Workplaces, so why shouldn’t I.

cm21872• 6 years ago

So the solution is for consumers to read a 60 pages legal document written in font 6 for each service they subscribe to, and which may change on short (or no) notice?

Of course people make their decisions based on trust.

mark_l_watson2• 6 years ago

Well, you have great alternatives. ProtonMail is rolling out secure storage, they already have VPN service that I am currently using, and some calendar support. FastMail is also a very good all around service.

Plenty of room for people to make their own choices.

ffpip• 6 years ago

Privacy built in... Oh fuck, wrong company

dzhiurgis3• 6 years ago

Tough choice between Google and some NorthVPN company incorporated in Caymans ;D

iJohnDoe5• 6 years ago

You would have to be a complete idiot to use this. You might as well put a Google Nest camera in your bedroom and let Google and their contractors watch you. Oh, wait.

0x008• 6 years ago

Can somebody explain to me what the point of this is? You cannot pirate, since google certainly cooperates with legal entities, you cannot avoid tracking, well, because google.

So I am really interested in an answer here: Is there any beneficial use case for this?

They say it's security? How is this more secure than regular HTTPS? What do I gain by paying for this?

FreshFries• 6 years ago

Can somebody explain to me what the point of this is?
What do I gain by paying for this?

Some people who use "pay for VPN" do this to protect their browsing privacy against "the first mile" (read: your ISP or sloppy free WiFi).

Security is a very, very broad brush.

VPN by Google One

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