ITT people claim that a Google VPN is a bad product for all use cases because Google is not a privacy-respecting company. This ignores all non-privacy use cases for using a VPN.
And even for privacy, this would've been a product where the vendors interest in protecting your privacy and your interest in protecting your privacy aligned in the case where you were not hiding from Google. For example if you used a Chromebook laptop, used the Google Chrome browser, or used Google services like Google Search and Google YouTube, then Google would already know everything about you. You can't hide your activity from them, but they can help you hide it from others.
Similar situations exist for other privacy disrespecting companies like Microsoft and Apple, where a user might reasonably want to hide from everyone other than their vendor of choice, whose product they consider good enough to allow them to see their computer activity as part of their payment. If you already subscribe to one privacy disrespecting vendor, it makes the most sense to go all-in.
Good, Google has enough access to everyone's data already. Nobody needs to willingly give them even more access by routing all of their traffic through a Google server.
Security when you’re on untrusted network. I can trust Google to snoop my banking data and update the spending power info on my ad profile, I can’t trust the random dude in trench coat also using the public wifi when I am traveling out of my roaming coverage.
I joke of course, but the security aspect is still valid.
What is it that you're doing that is still not using some form of authenticated encryption? Almost everything is https, ssh, almost all mailservers have tls support, irc does have tls support..
What's left that needs to be encrypted by a VPN?
Strictly speaking, Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) paired with DNS Over HTTPS (DOH) can resolve this. But not many people have their systems setup this way, so it is still pretty niche.
What's the threat model here? I can think of no DNS shennanigans that would not be detectable through the authentication mechainsms in TLS (chain-of-trust). Not having to trust network infrastructure is exactly what TLS is for.
Most DNS requests are clear text, which is why DOH was introduced to obscure it such that no one can snoop on you looking up something-embarrassing.com. Also, the initial request, before you get the SSL certificate from the web server, you must tell the server at 169.169.169.169 that you’re looking for the certificate for something-embarrassing.com before they can get you the correct certificate. This is why ECH was introduced. Neither of which have became mainstream yet, and so there are still some basic leakage going on.
You only use HTTPS everywhere until you don't. It's kinda like a security blanket to use a VPN in those situations. Someone could be running a MITM proxy and you're dumb enough/in a rush/etc. and click accept on the expired cert. Or some new 0day vulnerability allows badness to happen without your knowledge. Even without being able to see your traffic, a bad actor could still see your DNS requests and narrow down what services you use for further targeting, especially if you frequent a place.
It's not the guy in the trenchcoat next to you you need to worry about.
It's the fact that some unknown entity owns/has set up the WiFi.
Anyone working with complex network setup and admin will tell you how much you can abuse owning the network a user is connected to.
The network guys at work never use public WiFi, not hotels or anything. Neither do I, even with my much more limited knowledge of network administration.
Right, it's probably the same as every other "free" VPN. It's free because it gives them access to 100% of your internet traffic. Basically completely antithetical to the entire concept of a VPN.
