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Ask HN: Can Google employees see the search histories of users?

11 points by tikkun ↗ HN
I heard a story about a programmer searching for obscure keywords related to a specific programming language getting targeted on google for an ad about working at google.

This made me think. Can google employees see the search history of a user? How private is your search history? (before it expires based on whatever expiration length you picked)

17 comments

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wmf
Generally no. They have internal controls where only certain employees can access user data and they probably have to give a reason and get approval from a second person.
Vladimof
If I understand correctly... Not all the time but they can ask permission from friends if they cant?
wmf
No. 99% of Google employees probably can never see your data. There are specific departments where people can see your data but they should get fired if they do it without a good reason.
ceejayoz
If both work in the right department and don’t mind leaving an audit trail, I guess?
stevenalowe
The job-keyword targeting was automatic of course, but to answer your second question: any attempt to access an individual's search history without valid pre-authorized reasons (rare) will result in immediate termination. Not kidding, Security will show up at your desk and escort you off-campus within a few minutes.
Tabular-Iceberg
Does that mean that they leave all the data out in some kind of a honey pot that everyone can access, but are fired if they do?

If they have the capability to see who is authorised for what to alert security, why not use that capability to simply not allow it in the first place? Why give people credentials to do something that they are not authorised to do if you can avoid it?

stevenalowe
Most Googlers do not have access to the Search systems at all, let alone the historical archives, but some do out of necessity. Monitoring systems trigger security alerts on inappropriate queries (no details, for obvious reasons)
ggm
I visited mountain view, and they had a display in the foyer, which was like a word-cloud summation over search.

Lets just say that search companies know what you look for. The question stands, about how strongly individuals can "see" it, but I put it to you that if a senior engineer can ask the abstract question "can you send me the names via a recruiter of anyone who looks for parallel programming in GO, we need the skills" it does not mean your query was looked at by eyeballs, by that engineer. A machine did it, and fed the results to the recruiter and the engineer.

If the engineer said "and who doesn't have a daytime porn habit" I guess you get to the meat in the sandwich.

floatinglotus
At oneof my previous employers, the CEO and founder had worked at a pretty high level designing some of Google’s first network hardware.

Anyhow, we were forbidden to use any Google product except search (because we couldn’t NOT use Google search). We even opted for some crappy email self hosted thing that was a constant problem for everyone in the company.

It was sort of made clear to us that Gmail at that time was reading/analyzing/storing everything and all of that data was considered more valuable than our search history.

hrrsn
> I heard a story about a programmer searching for obscure keywords related to a specific programming language getting targeted on google for an ad about working at google.

I got the invite to Foobar by searching a relatively common MySQL query. Maybe they're profiling you based on your history.

rhmw2b
You probably heard about Foobar https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/google-foobar-googles-secret-hi...
islandert
I remember when that popped up on my screen in college. Fun problems. There was one where you derived the page rank algorithm, but they framed it as radioactive decay.

Definitely a little questionable though for them to use their browser monopoly and search history to poach developers...

shakkhar
Almost certainly not. In aggregate - may be, but looking at individual user search history without strong business reason and approval would be a quick way to get fired.

Generally, people have very little to be scared of big tech rank and file employees. It's not worth losing our job to satisfy morbid curiosity.

Trias11
Most certainly yes.

Depending of level of access of employee.

The data is all there.

high_byte
I'm gonna go against the common theme here where the answer is "most certainly not". google has massive amounts of data from various sources, between their products, advertisments and affiliates/third parties, they have way more data points than you imagine.

speaking of third parties, and the freemium economy, advertising, tracking and other data mining operations also have vast amounts of information about you. that free flashlight app you installed? has your location even when it's not running. also it serves ads, now any advertiser can access your location. and that bullshit about anonymization? there are more techniques to de-anonymize data than they're are to anonymize.

you bet someone out there can pin point your location, from now and 10 years back, what you searched for, what games you played sitting on the toilet, etc.

that's related to the AdInt industry. (advertising intelligence)