Google has a VPN service now

The "P" is silent.
- I think you’ll find it stands for parasitic.
- Rivacy?

A private vpn is an oxymoron. Since you tunnel all your data to some server.
Google and privacy is an oxymoron.
"Google private vpn" would be a mega oxymoron.
- Not really. What if it's your VPN? Mine allows me access to my home network, which is its primary focus, but it also obfuscates what my phone is doing online, and blocks trackers.
  (Adguard home and wireguard)
  It also lets me use my phone on 4chan... so there's that.
  
  Commercial services have tainted the word for sure.
  
  If you're of the few people on earth to care enough and knows enough to set it's own vpn, sure. but otherwise, NordVPN gonna still sponsor youtubers and lure people into a false sense of privacy.
- The most oxymoronic
  
  Oxycontonic even.
- “Private” in “virtual private network” means “routed by different rules”. It’s the same “private” that’s in “private Internet Protocol addresses”.
  It was never about personal privacy.
- yeah, an oxy-unbelievably-dense-motherfucker
  
  Sir, we reached critical mass, It's turning into a black hole !
- It's an oximoron in every company which make money with surveillance advertisings. Google undoubtedly has apps and services with a very high quality and often without real competition or alternative, but this has a very high cost and if the main income, apart from some paid services, is based on selling user data to advertising companies, it is logical and almost inevitable that it becomes a data moloch that uses any dirty trick to obtain these. It is an axiom: power corrupts
  Mozilla now regrets having signed with Google as a sponsor and is now trying to get out of this contract, especially since Google plans to introduce this WEI DRM, but Alphabet is not doing this the easy way and Mozilla depends a lot on this money to maintain its infrastructure. We will see what comes of this, but it is really urgent that Mozilla changes its business model, it would be very desirable and necessary.
  Moral: If you want to maintain your independence and freedom, do not accept outside investors
  
  It was an Interesting read, thanks
- tunnel all your data through a very special GOOGLE server.

- Makes me cringe thinking of all those years I was using Google DNS, back when I believed that “don’t be evil” shit
  
  What do you use now?

And it'll be gone in two years.
- That long? Make your bets folks!
- Or, they'll bake it into Chrome, thus controlling all advertising.
  
  I’d put money on it.
- Your logs won't ;)
- It launched in 2020 so giving it another 2 is a long shot

Oh sure. Use the company known for mining the fuck out of personal data to protect my personal data from being mined.

This is actually really useful if you want to be tracked more by google

- A VPN doesn't really protect you from Google though. They get their data through trackers, which doesn't get blocked by a VPN. Obviously I'd still not use a Google VPN, because who knows what they'd do with that data
  
  No one knows what any VPN provider would do with that data so that's not google exclusive.
- Idk... maybe not great for privacy but I just test it (I have been a subscriber for a while and didn't know there was a VPN) and it bypasses my country blocks of certain piracy pages so so far it's kind of usefull.
  
  Just be careful with that. If Google is logging your sessions, then your country's government can request that data. The idea that Google wouldn't keep logs is laughable.
- 🙄

This is funny. Please pipe ALL of your online activities through us. We won't spy, gather, sell, or snitch.
Get fucked.

Lmao "Cops sell drugs now" :D
- Caps have always sold drugs.
  
  I thought it was the CIA?
  
  Always have.
  
  Some of those that work forces

At least Google VPN is honest about who tracks you with this VPN, LOL
- Does it really say that?
  
  OP added as a joke
  
  Only on chrome
  
  I was also curious, so I found this page. It looks nothing like the screenshot (maybe because Im on mobile), and the only sentence coming close, under the "Extra online protection" heading, is: "Reduce online tracking by hiding your IP address". As if that means anything if you have Google apps installed on your phone.
  But after reading more, I found a link to their how-it-works page, which then linked to their github page. Is beeing open-source really enough to show it's secure and private? I still wouldn't trust them.

I'm thinking of the target user for this: For us here it's a really unfunny joke. For the people wanting to do "non-kosher" stuff like watching streaming for other countries or even outright pirating i don't think Google's gonna have their back. People trying to hide their identity while doing compromising stuff (like anything sexual or identity related, not illegal but not something they want in public) hopefully know not to trust Google on this. And corporate users already have their own corporate VPNs, don't think they're aiming for those (yet).
Who the fuck is left as potential user? My only conclusion is the terminally gullible. I see no other option. And since of course there's a sucker born every minute it'll have millions of users...
- They're fishing for people who think it's important to have one because YouTube sponsorships told them so.
  
  But they're all using a discounted NordVPN thanks to Warographics.
- It can be easy to forget when you run in these techy circles - There are alot of people whose entire knowledge/existence of the internet is entirely isolated within Facebook. They get a new phone, install Facebook, and never leave. Any web use is via the inbuilt browser.
  That's the most extreme, but beyond that is the same but anything non Facebook is exclusively Google. They don't even know that you could have a non-Gmail email account. LOADS of people have never owned a PC now, they grew up on a smartphone and android (or istuff) is literally their only comprehension of the web.
  
  Depressingly likely...
- I used it when my wife was at the hospital and they had a public wifi network with no password. I already have Google One, so it was a no Brainer in my case.
- For casual people traveling that don't want their free wifi being spied on. Also it's free.
- They are left with a sample size exactly as large or as small as the body of users who still google anything.
- Any VPN is fine for piracy IMO. Any gap whatsoever between copyright troll torrent peers including you in their mass automated letters to ISPs solves the problem, it isn't a high bar.
- I pirate the shit out of torrents on Google VPN for years no problems. Spectrum kept hassling me getting caught twice in one month. Switched to Google and never got bothered again. They don't throttle torrents either.

The point of a VPN is to protect your privacy. Google is the last company I would trust to do that.
- A VPN doesn't help that much anyways for privacy.
  
  VPN is great for some use cases, even for some privacy, but people think that VPN = anonymity.

lol hard pass.

Damn, people here really misunderstand the threat surface. The Google VPN is just fine for staying safe from things like rogue wifi hotspots and even Stingray devices to some extent. It's also makes it much harder for your ISP to data mine your web activity. Obviously if you have an Android device using Google services, Google already has access to pretty much any information they might get from the VPN service. If you are de-Googled, then obviously you'd never use this.
For the vast majority of people, privacy should be what happens outside of your curated public image. Everyone has a public image. If you try to be completely dark all the time, chances are you will slip up and just end up in an even worse position because you don't understand when or how you've lost control. This is counterintelligence 101. Real first day stuff, but so many of the 'pop-security' influencers on the internet struggle with it, because they don't have any practical CI training. However, having a public image doesn't mean you cede all control to every observer. Obviously there are many choices for VPNs, but for everyday use, this VPN Google bundles with various other products is generally high quality.
- There are quite simply better services out there, why defend a mega corp? You said it yourself they will sell every fucking byte of data, VPNs aren’t hard to figure out especially these days with ezpz UX.
  Truly fuck this service, it’s not like it’s the only one with low barrier of entry, it provides some security but by nature dissolves privacy. You also can’t shift your location at all so it’s even less useful
  Mullvad for example is easy as FUCK is super cheap (google one vpn is essentially the same pricing model for basic, $2 diff, the difference being mullvad doesn’t limit your data like google one does!!!!) and performative, as well as anonymous, no account or bullshit, plays nice with their simple-as-fuck default user apps or with others like WireGuard for more config
  WHY use an inferior service that fucks you? Especially as it limits amount of data whereas mulvad doesn’t.
  It’s worse in every fucking way
  
  An easy barrier of entry isn't always the issue at hand. I think what the user is saying, hate Google or not, you are at the very least safe to some degree. A lot of people don't realize that VPNS are just ways of manipulating where your data goes and who sees it and that VPNs can be abused as services even if they aren't Google.
  Those same services can sell your data just the same as Google. Let's not forget that the "mega corp" everyone loves to hate is the reason you have Android competing against iOS which is part of another mega corp. People on Lemmy should get the fuck off their high horses.
  
  Upvoted because Mulvad. 👍

No fucking way will Google EVER be my VPN.
- There are way worst VPNs out there, they are not only a scam and spyware, like Google- or Opera"VPNs", they also dangerous. eg Hola VPN 🥶 Apart of Windscribe, Proton and maybe Calyx, there isn't any trustworth free VPN out there, and all free, even if they are trustworth are limited, in use of monthly amount of data (10 Gb in Windscribe), or/and in the amount of servers. If a free VPN offers a lot of servers AND unlimited amount of data, by definition is a scam or worse. Servers cost money and free VPN only can offer free dedicated public servers and there a not so much, only a few in some countries.
- I'm surprised meta don't create a vpn product.
  But yeah, No way either of them would ever be my vpn.

A google VPN sounds as sus as huggies condoms.
- Fucken hilarious since I'm currently dealing with newborn. Granted, huggies diapers have held back huuge poops.
  
  Haha same here. Huggies FTW.

This is nothing new It has existed for 3 years now.
- I just find out and I have been paying for years... so they don't advertise it very well that's for sure...

They want to make sure noone else can steal your data..
- ... but them.

if we're being honest this is probably just as good for privacy as most popular vpns (sooo not much and over advertising how much they protect you)
they did release a white paper on how the service works if you trust it's what they're actually doing. https://one.google.com/about/vpn/howitworks
- I keep literally all private data in Google. When I opened, refinanced, paid off my mortgage with Chase, I was inundated with calls and mail because my bank sold my data, account balances and contact info. Somewhere within Google is all of my private email and AFAICT, they haven't ever sold any data from it.
  Google does some bad stuff. They sell access to you, not your data.
  
  When people talk about "Google stealing your data" they are referring to non personal data related to things you buy so that advertisers can target their market better, they aren't like trading secrets and tracking where you go so they can jump out and I dunno, scare you or some shit? No it's just for as revenue stuff. They aren't even serving you more ads they are just serving you more accurate ones because those will generate more revenue from advertisers. Nothing is shared with them like your name or address or even your age really (just a general age group)
- They've had one for a while as far as I know but it didn't work for me outside of the US so it was useless for me since I used to be safer abroad.
- And I guess they won't put any recaptcha so, there's that...
- Yeah, as a heavy Google user I would use this if I had a reason to use a VPN. Google is scraping all my information anyway from my Android phone, my Google searches, and G-Mail, Maps, etc. They're not going to gain any additional information about me from usage of a VPN.
  This is probably true for anyone using Google One.
  If I had an iPhone or used DuckDuckGo or Firefox was taking other security measures, it's probably pointless, but I've just gone all in on only Google have any of my data.

They really do think we are all fucking idiots, don't they?
- Most are.
- So long as the majority doesn't know any better, it's profitable.
  looks at my Pixel 6
  Well, now I feel dumb.
  
  Had to buy a Pixel 6a to ne able to install grapheneOS, and I did buy it renewed
- I mean, are they wrong?

That would be like hiring professional bank robbers with a long string of hits to provide security for a bank.
- Not trusting big Goog at all here, but some of the best hackers have been known to get hired by big corporations or the government, seeing as how they're the best at what to look for.
  
  Bruh, you have a cybersec violation on your rep sheet and you couldn't get a job sweeping gravel off a cybersec company's parking lot.
  "Cool cyber hacker gets hired by glowie boys" happens only in movies. The risk just isn't worth it. In the very rare cases where the skill is worth the risk, which it never is, rest assured there is a handler team authorised to break both hands, the second the hacker goes off script.
  
  In this situation Google controls the whole setup and is not under any oversight from the customers (i.e. those using the VPN).
  In that example of yours they would be a still active hacker whose prime source of income is hacking and who makes way more money from hacking than from said gigs for the "big corporations or the government" and who isn't at all being directly whatched by their employers to make sure they don't abuse the situation.
  Would you give a know active black hat a gig doing penetration testing, which they can do from their own place using whatever they want with no oversight and were the possible profit they can make selling what they find in your systems vastly outweighs what you're paying them?
- Aren't some of the more profitable and secure services created by those trained to break security?
  
  Well, Google continues to have the profit motivation of selling people's personal data, whilst the way black hats turn into white hats is that they can make more money (or at least safer) by helping to improve security rather than break it.
  You don't really hire an active black hat to do penetration testing into your system when they can make way more money selling what they'll find in your system than what you're paying them for said penetration testing.
  The problem is that Google's core business is still built-around using (and selling, though indirectly) people's private data.

Most people browse with Chrome and possibly with Google's DNS, so this really doesn't make any difference from a privacy standpoint.

Hasn't this been around for a while? I've had the option on my phone since last year. And while Google isn't exactly trustworthy, it's better than some of the shadier free options out there.
It's fast and it's accessible for non-techy people. Certainly better than using an unsecured network with no protection at all.
- What I want to know is are there really people sitting in Starbucks all day with a laptop trying to view your Instagram traffic.
  
  A few uears ago there mighta been of you were popular enough. Nowadays probably not.

I'm just upvoting all the "lol", "lmfao" and "hahaha" comments.

- Confayyssssssss!

They've had one for quite a while. My original Google pixel had the option to enable when on unknown wifi ie coffee shops and such. While it provides no value and even negative value for you guys here I can see how it'd be useful for places where you don't trust the network you are on. But that also means you have to trust Google 🤣
- I would literally trust an untrustworthy public thing way more than Google. And I don't trust 'em at all

Anyone that actually puts their trust in this deserves whatever happens to them
- I used a Google VPN, and now my dog is addicted to heroin.
  
  @socsa

Feel like I'll get flamed for saying it but I use this service and I think it's good. I don't see the privacy concern. If you look at the privacy policy they state that they essentially do not use your browsing activity for anything other than ensuring the vpn is working. They also open source their client application. Anyone can say they're evil and they lie or whatever but in my country and many others the statements they've made about how this works and the data they use mean something.
- I'm iffy about giving more days to Google, but I use their VPN when I'm on any kind of questionable WiFi. I'd rather give the data to Google than to whatever random place is getting it from my hotels or whatever.
  I also have a VPN server setup at home, but generally routing everything through home is too slow (for now, I might be getting significantly increased upload speed soon).
  
  I think most people in this thread are missing the point of this service. This is 100% a valid option when traveling and needing to protect yourself while using public wifi. This exists to protect yourself from identity theft and fraud.
  
  I agree, even if they are harvesting that data I'd honestly rather it was Google than a thousand little companies that barely anyone even knows exist and can get away with more illegal action.

Lol. These people!

How about we start getting paid for all the information they steal.

Imagine trusting a corrupt mega corp lmao

This has been around for years.

Will Google ask me to solve a captcha while connected to a Google VPN?
- you need to solve a captcha to turn on the vpn

Send all my traffic to google? No thanks
- If you use Chrome then you already do.
  If you use Firefox and never went into the settings to change the default omnibar settings then you already do.
  
  What is omnibar
  
  I don't use either of those 👍
- Pretty please?

Google VPN lmao

😂

Our local druglord is offering drug protection for kids at schools! Yey! And at $5 bucks, their service is way cheaper than the war on drugs that the cops keep peddling!
Before I can get the kids to their first drug training, I gotta get the truck fixed, and what better way to do that than Joe? Joe may be the drunkest one eyed blind rheumatic paraplegic mute there is, but he's kept all our cars running pretty good since that one time we accidentally ran him over. The car was making a noise and then it was just fine. Since then we go to Joe's for regular maintenance. Well, it's the alley behind Joe's actually. It might not last, Joe seems to be getting slower and slower and much less talkative. Like the first time we ran him over, he was just blasting his mouth off. Last time he fixed my truck he wasn't moving around as much and there were more flies around him than usual. Anyway, Joe is the way!
And don't let Google trick you. They just want more of your data.

I'm super confused by the FUD spread in nearly every comment here.
Pretty much every argument boils down to "we don't trust google does what they say", which is funny because I'd like to challenge anyone to provide evidence that google actually sells any of your data. They sell advertising slots that they promise will find the right people, but your data never leaves google. No advertiser gets to see it.
This VPN service promises and has been independently audited to never log or analyze your traffic and even has built in provisions to anonymize your traffic within Google so they can't reconstruct it.
So apart from the questionable assumption that google is blatantly lying, what's the argument here? Apart from maybe missing some popular VPN Features like country selection.
Also this is for people that already pay for Google storage anyways, so I don't see the problem for the intended target audience, it's sticky an improvement in privacy for them and they get it for free. It sure as hell beats getting your traffic intercepted and ads injected into random http pages like some ISPs do.
- Bruh, I can go to cybersecurity school, study it for a lifetime, audit this service myself, find that it does anonymise and does everything right, and STILL refuse to use it, simply because this just isn't who you get a VPN service from.
  You don't buy your meat from the town gravekeeper, atleast not as long as there are other butchers, and especially not if the meat comes cheap.
  
  So your argument has nothing to do with the product itself and everything to do with "hurr Durr Google bad".
  Which is fine, and a valid opinion, but has nothing to do with the product.
  I'm annoyed because 90% of the comments here imply or outright state that google will use this data for ads or other means, which has no basis in reality.
- They don't sell directly. But they sure sell.
  This explains it better: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and
  
  Of all the replies, this is the first one to actually make a good point instead of random google-bad handwaving.
  Thank you
- Google is an ad company first, and everything else later. There are countless examples of them pushing tracking technologies that nobody wants - AMP, FLOC/Privacy sandbox, manifest v3 to kill adblockers. The list is just too long. At this point, any argument in favor of Google is just astroturfing.
- Apple provides exactly the same service(s) and now with their advertising division, ad slots to the higher bidder too.
  But they are portrayed as Jesus while Google is Lucifer.
  The default has become Google = bad. It's also fashionable to blame them for all evils . 🤷
  I won't be using their VPN because I already paid someone else for a 3 year plan, not because Google is bad.
  
  I don't like Apple either.
- Anecdotally: i got Google VPN free w my Google one sub, used it to pirate some movies. still got a warning from Comcast (for one of the star wars movies, iirc).
  Went right back to Mullvlad. Speeds were better anyway.

It's been around for a bit now. It's free for anyone who pays them for storage. I pay them... But I'll never use that shit. I have zero trust for Google.
- What do you store with them that isn't private enough to worry about but vital enough to pay for?
- You not considered Proton for cloud storage?

Oh my, I thought this was a joke!

Lately it seems that all too much of my life is spent alternately laughing at things that are so ludicrous that only a blithering moron would fall for them and dejectedly remembering that the world is stuffed to the brim with blithering morons.
- I feel this all the time. Like 3 of every 4 headlines I read are so absurd they can't be real, except they are real. We're truly living a comedy.

I make my own VPN, so no thanks. Not going Google haha
- What do you mean that you make your own VPN?
  
  Get cheap VPS.
  Install Wireguard as server
  Configure
  Forward the necessary ports on said VPS
  Connect to VPS
  Profit

HAHAHHAHAHAJAHA

Those both sound like you things
— Brian Griffin said upon learning Quagmire has a win/win relationship with his dentist where he 1) buys nitrous oxide from him and 2) bangs his wife

They've had one for years. If you use one of their phones or have their MVNO service you have had access to it. Might have even been turned on by default. Just a heads up.
- Going to hijack this comment but just to let you know you can also download the application for Windows as well.
  If you scroll to the bottom of the page where it advertises Google VPN you'll see this link.
  https://dl.google.com/tag/s/appguid%3D%7BA1F022B1-145B-4EBF-9752-95B413C837A3%7D%26appname%3DVPNByGoogleOne%26needsadmin%3Dtrue%26lang%3Den-US%26ap%3Dprod/google-one/VpnByGoogleOneSetup.exe

I'm surprised they didn't offer one already
- They have, for years. This isn't new.
  
  I blame the post title then

Google's unbelievably aggressive BS is the just about the only reason I run a VPN. Despite taking extraordinary steps to block them, Google still manages to regularly shove their BS into my life.
Google removed "Don't Be Evil" from their mission statement for a reason.

Yeah, I’m going trust my VPN service, which I would probably use for torrenting if I were to get it, with the company that was removing torrenting sites from its users own private bookmark lists. That can’t possibly end badly for me.

- that ship sailed about two decades ago.

you didn't see this two years ago? maybe 3