Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ProAm 2057 days 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

5 comments

> 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.

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

Read their whitepaper: https://www.gstatic.com/subscriptions/marketing_page/vpn/whi...

Client source code: https://github.com/google/vpn-libraries

What they're doing - cryptographic blinding that separates authentication from user session - is probably the best approach at subscriber privacy I've seen so far.

I wonder how they'll deal with abuse.

> What they're doing - cryptographic blinding that separates authentication from user session - is probably the best approach at subscriber privacy I've seen so far.

can someone eli5 please?

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.

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.
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.
> Can't think of any upside myself, even the price isn't good.

The price is zero if you are already on that Google One tier, which is pretty good.

Whether its good if you aren't depends on not just the VPN service itself, but how much you value the other things provided by Google One.

Isn't the point of google one to have some services such as support?
i was just about to say -- now they can just read from your dns directly :) guess don't use 8.8.8.8 either :)
1.1.1.1 is faster anyway :)