1. For non paid users, it isn't turned back on. But it is turned on if you're a paying user. In these cases it's never the user who switched it off, it was the admin, so since the control is being shifted from admin to user (admin can no longer turn it off for users of workspace apps) its kind of like a brand new setting for them.
2. True but it's somewhat useful to be able to use your account on different devices and retain your history.
> 1. We’re talking about people who have already switched it off.
No, we're talking about accounts who already had it (as part of broader setting) disabled for them, in a context where the data in question can (contractually) only be used to provide the service anyhow.
> 2. There is no need for any tracking to implement this. It can be done on the client.
Pray tell me how you can do client side search history recommendation for the first query I make after logging in.
> No, we're talking about accounts who already had it (as part of broader setting) disabled for them, in a context where the data in question can (contractually) only be used to provide the service anyhow.
That doesn’t contradict that it was switched off intentionally.
> Pray tell me how you can do client side search history recommendation for the first query I make after logging in.
Logging in to what? Are you saying you want your search history synced between your browsers? If so, that’s a solved problem that doesn’t require Google to track you.
The users in question never opted out, their domain admins opted out of a different feature.
And the corollary equally applies: it's a trivial feature with no privacy impact, why require opt-in. I don't want to be spammed with opt-ins every time every app I use adds a trivial new feature. I'd be clicking a dozen boxes a day.
Keep in mind all the user data collected is still under the workspace data use agreement which is very strict and disallows using the data for pretty much anything that isn't directly providing that service to that user/organization.
Google turns off maps nav search history if you turn off web search history. Maps could easily switch to local to the device instead, since you usually nav with the same device over and over and could rebuild common history if you got a new device (or transfer history), but it feels like they want a carrot and stick.
Well the google PM said that before this change all their apps history were unified, and they just split off the workspace apps. But maybe you're right and the only reason it's still that way rather than split up is a business decision rather than a developmental/resource allocation decision.
What? Yes they are! Browser history includes every page you navigate to, including the "search results for 'tps report'" page of a cloud storage service.
Ah you're quite right (I was expecting that the queries would be POST-like, not GET-like).
This distinction doesn't matter too much though, because having the browser be responsible for this fails in at least two ways:
1. The browser shouldn't need knowlege of how to parse every query language of every webapp you use.
2. The browser can't actually give you the results of those queries. If I search for "tps reports", the browser knows I entered that query string, but it doesn't know what the 15 results were, and so can't, for example take my prior search into account when I search for "12/17/2022" to uprank the TPS report for that date, as opposed to some other report. Nor can it even do the weaker bit and assume that since I searched TPS yesterday, when I search "reports" today, it should consider upranking tps reports.
I admire how focused you are on drive & gmail search quality. I have a lot of concerns about using user data to improve search that are larger than this specific feature or discussion. This leads me to implement strategies to reduce new data generated, such as loading URLs directly instead of accessing them from search. I’d like to conclude by conceding your approach will generate the better results, but that the best search results aren’t what I’m optimizing for.
I certainly do not want that! I want to search through the web as it is, not as some search engine imagines I would prefer it to be, based on its inevitably limited understanding of my preferences.
Smart systems which sometimes work and sometimes don't are vastly more frustrating than dumb systems which do exactly what they're told, every time.
Ah ok! So then the other replies are valid then. Agree with others, to me this is useless. Browser handles it already if I wanted it, and I never use that anyway.
