[semiotagonal]

I think you're missing my point that even if you willingly impose Google surveillance on yourself, Google Drive is still worse than Google Analytics because your personally identifiable activity is visible to the author and/or other readers, not just Google.

[Xorlev]

> personally identifiable activity is visible to the author and/or other readers

View activity is not surfaced to users. View activity is tracked, and in a _GSuite domain_ (such as your job) an admin can audit that activity. For a standard Google account, a user cannot know whether another user has viewed that document, let alone which user. Is there a way you're seeing this that I'm missing? If so I'd like to know about it so I can raise it as an issue.

If you're thinking about docs/sheets/slides presence, unless you've been shared directly on the document the owner (and other users) only see "Anonymous <Animal>".

If the document is shared to you comment/edit access, that comment/edit activity _will_ show up in the document's activity stream, but at that point the owner of the document already knows you have access by virtue of sharing it to you.

I realize you probably don't have much incentive to believe me, but as an engineer on Drive I can say that we take privacy incredibly seriously.

[semiotagonal]

Thanks for the response. I'm mostly familiar with Google Docs in the workplace, where it was apparent who was reading what document at a particular moment from a list of users at the upper-right.

Separately, on my personal account, at some point I viewed a publicly shared document from a well-known person, and that ended up in my "shared documents" (or "documents shared with you"?) for ages. I wasn't sure if that sharing was evident in both directions. I've avoided clicking on shared Google Drive documents since then.

If it's not the case that the owner of the doc can audit activity, I stand corrected.

EDITED TO ADD: I suppose the root of my confusion is that it's pretty hard to distinguish the behavior of Google Drive from Google Docs; and once the lack of privacy has been observed anywhere (e.g. using Docs the workplace), it's hard not to assume it's also happening with PDF's shared via Google Drive, simply because you can't know what the other person is seeing.

It's especially hard when there is an asymmetry (e.g. in a non-GSuite environment, I can see some publicly shared document in my "shared with me" list, but I guess the sharer can't see me).

[semiotagonal]

Also if you sit near the Android people, let them know I'm going to be irritated if I find that my parents have been tricked into activating location tracking on their phones again! It seems like I have to shut off all the various Google privacy settings every time I visit them. They don't want to be tracked.