05/08/2026
Is it Workspace Intelligence "eliminating the need to manually provide context to Gemini on every query," or is it a massive overstep and violation of my organization's privacy?
As of April 2026, Google Workspace will "draw from content in Gmail, Drive, Chat, and Calendar, as well as connected third party sources" to inform Gemini to help me work better. (An example of a connected third party source may be Salesforce, Trello for Gmail, DocuSign, etc.)
So essentially, Google will mine the org's data to inform itself to tailor responses for me. Which can be great, if none of the data is Personally Identifiable Information, (PII).
The concern is not with unauthorized access, it is with authorized access. Google Workspace's privacy policy states:
"We’ve designed our technology so that your Google Workspace content (emails, documents, etc.) will not be shared with other users without permission."
What permission are users granting?
"Google carefully reviews every legal request to ensure it satisfies applicable laws" This is particularly questionable when laws change, when enforcement oversteps, when other countries don't share the same governance, (Canadian sues U.S. Homeland Security, which allegedly sought his Google data after critical social media posts, https://lnkd.in/ekeqds97).
Now, the notice does say "Your data is never used to train generative AI models or for advertising purposes." Great, but I received notification regarding this change on April 22, 2026 that this change was in affect as of April 22, 2026.
Before you move on from this, know how your database is being exposed.