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I may be wrong or naive, but I see this move (offer search history that won't be used for advertising) as a good one. Looks like they are finally trying to diversify their business models and have their users as customers, not product.

If true, that means our social pressure on Google (and Facebook, collaterally) is working, and we should keep applying it.

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Still, it defaults to on, so if history is turned off and you miss the email, it will now be silently turned on.

The right thing to do would be to pop up a question asking if I want to opt in, keeping it to off if dismissed.

Considering all the other blocking modals Google is forcing me through as part of CAPTCHA when surfing the web, that should not be a big deal.

Opting an existing user into data retention without asking them is never defensible, and I imagine this will result in heavy fines in the EU down the line (after all, private individuals can be Workspace admins as well, it’s not strictly used by businesses)

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