Hacker Remix

Ask HN: Google forcibly enabled Gemini in our Corp Org. How to disable?

35 points by exabrial 6 months ago | 19 comments

Google is playing strong arm tactics trying to get ahead of their competition. Our users logged in yesterday to see Gemini enabled in Gmail.

Despite what Google's literature says about being safe and private, they have a history of retroactively opting people into features and our corporate information cannot be submitted externally.

We cannot find controls in the admin console to disable. Has anyone else figured out how to disable Gemini integration with corporate Gmail?

This surprises me, because Google has been litigated against successfully in the past about forcing users into their products in the past.

wylie39 6 months ago

I am in a similar boat, from what I can tell you can disable the Gemini app here[1] but if you want to disable it in Gmail and Drive you need to have an enterprise plan then you can disable it here [2]

[1] https://admin.google.com/ac/managedsettings/47208553126 [2] https://admin.google.com/ac/managedsettings/793154499678

exabrial 6 months ago

Wow, thank you. This was buried deep (not an accident of course).

"Pay us more money, or be forced into using our feature" is a new sales tactic.

bigfatkitten 6 months ago

Support will give you access to [2] if you raise a case and complain.

gtirloni 6 months ago

> our corporate information cannot be submitted externally.

Isn't your corporate information already submitted externally if you're using Google Workspace?

apimade 6 months ago

In the context here, I believe they mean someone can _use_ the information externally. Yes, we rely on external vendors for business critical operations like email, or our cell phone providers for customer communications. That does not mean we’d usually grant them access to view, distribute or make use of in any way the content of those interactions without external governance requirements (court order, legal discovery, compliance/regulatory requirements).

For example in the US, a court could compel any external vendor we outsource our data to for operational, processing or storage purposes to access that data for any use it deems necessary. This was the expectation of any commercial business relationship across the country.

Gmail broke this with ad data, but the data was meta-data - information about information, like ad groups and categories relevant to your org.

Now publicly published content is being ingested and used to train models, at this stage I would assume if you share Docs publicly that would be in scope.

Proton has a good article explaining what is and isn’t ingested, and what they have the right to use: https://proton.me/blog/google-docs-ai-scraping

hoppyhoppy2 6 months ago

Does goog not offer support for their corporate customers, who could answer such questions?

exabrial 6 months ago

We've asked, but we just get the AI Firewall. "Did this answer your question?"

Edit, see above, the answer is to pay them more money apparently.

toast0 6 months ago

Yes, you can talk to a person. That person may not have any relevant information though, and is generally not empowered to find any information.

gerash 6 months ago

I'm not sure what this post even means. You either trust the provider or not. you are already uploading your corporate content via Drive, Gmail, Calendar, etc. but suddenly another service is a security and privacy risk?

MS office has taken the same route (in fact Goog simply copied their strategy of including copilot)

So you might want to look for a totally different provider

dboreham 6 months ago

Don't use Google for corporate email.

eastbound 6 months ago

How do you create a Chrome account without Gmail accounts?

Hizonner 6 months ago

> Despite what Google's literature says about being safe and private, they have a history of retroactively opting people into features and our corporate information cannot be submitted externally.

Wait, what? Anything you do in any Google app is "externally". That's what the cloud is.

You're willing to put data in Google's hands, and have Google process data in way X, but you don't want Google to process those data in way Y, which has pretty much identical security and privacy properties?

Anyhow, the solution here is not to use Google services. You shouldn't be doing that anyhow.

codegeek 6 months ago

This is a really shitty move by Google. Not happy at all. I don't want to use Gemini or any other AI crap they throw at us. Specially that we had a contract and they are increasing the price during the contract without us having any say. Google has really lost the "Don't do evil" mantra.

The problem is that once you are heavily tied into the Workspace ecosystem (Email, Google Drive, Google Meet etc), it is tough to change and move. Possible Yes. But the idea of moving decades of email and data is just horrifying.

bushbaba 6 months ago

Best way is to take your money elsewhere.

fldskfjdslkfj 6 months ago

Why is it an issue?

AlexandrB 6 months ago

I don't get why it's so common to expect customers to explain themselves when they don't like something. "The customer is always right".

fldskfjdslkfj 6 months ago

Because maybe they dont understand the feature and are panicking over nothing? (or maybe they do, but there's only one way to find out)

YaBa 6 months ago

Privacy, of course. Corporate data is not the same as the e-mails you send to your friends.

6 months ago

xnx 6 months ago

Get upset about whatever you want, but my concern about this feature being "forcibly enabled" is about the same as my concern about spellcheck.