Plenty of small businesses start with a free Gmail address and a few shared Google Docs. It takes five minutes and costs nothing. Years later, the company’s customer conversations, invoices, bids and spreadsheets all live with a company that makes most of its money from advertising.
Our advice to the businesses we support is plain: don’t run your business on Gmail or Google’s office tools (Docs, Sheets and Drive). Use business email on your own domain through Microsoft 365, with Microsoft 365 business plans for documents and collaboration, managed by your IT provider. The engineering at Google is good. The business model, the control and the way Google connects your data across its products are the problem.
Part of an advertising business
Alphabet’s 2025 annual report (Form 10-K) puts Google advertising at $294.7 billion of $402.8 billion in revenue, about 73 percent, and lists Gmail among the “Google owned and operated properties” behind its advertising revenue.
To be accurate: Google’s Gmail ads help page says, “We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads.” Ads are chosen “based on your online activity while you’re signed into Google.” We accept that. Our concern is different: your company’s mail and files sit in accounts whose activity feeds an advertising profile, under terms your business never negotiated.
Gemini now reads the inbox and the drive
In January 2026 Google announced that Gmail is “entering the Gemini era,” with AI summaries of email threads and “Help Me Write” rolling out “to everyone at no cost.” To summarize your mail, Google’s AI has to process it.
Google’s smart features page describes the settings behind this. One, “Smart features in Google Workspace,” lets Gemini “summarize content, create drafts, and find key information.” Another, “Smart features in other Google products,” lets your email and files power “Personal Intelligence in Search services” and in the Gemini app, “personal accounts only.” Google lists these as off by default in the European Economic Area, Japan, Switzerland and the UK. For organizations elsewhere, Google’s admin help says they are on by default.
This is why we say a Google-based office doesn’t get a true search. On personal accounts, Google’s design lets your own mail and history shape the answers Search gives you. Google’s Personal Intelligence announcement says connecting Gmail is opt-in, and that Google does not “train directly on your Gmail inbox,” but does use “limited info, like specific prompts” and responses.
What happens to what you ask Gemini
Picture an employee asking Gemini to “summarize my emails with the Anchorage contractor about the bid.” Google’s Gemini Apps Privacy Hub (updated September 24, 2026) says, for personal accounts:
- With Keep Activity on, chats are used to improve Google’s AI and are kept 18 months by default. “A subset of chats are reviewed by human reviewers.”
- Reviewed chats are kept “for up to three years,” even if the user deletes their activity.
- With Keep Activity off, chats are still kept with the account for 72 hours.
- Connected apps such as Gmail and Drive work only with Keep Activity on, and Google “saves and uses info from Connected Apps” under the same rules.
- Google’s advice: “Please don’t enter confidential information that you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see.”
When the vendor tells you not to put confidential information in, believe it. Business email and documents are full of confidential information.
What about paid Google Workspace?
Google Workspace is Google’s business edition, and its commitments are real. Google’s security whitepaper states there is “no advertising in Google Workspace.” Its generative AI privacy hub (updated August 14, 2026) says content is “not human reviewed or otherwise used for Generative AI model training outside your domain without permission,” and Personal Intelligence is not offered to business accounts. We take Google at its word on all of that.
Our reservation is about control and the relationship, not ads or training. As of September 2026, Google says the Gemini app is “turned on by default” for Workspace, and Gemini features in Gmail, Drive, Docs and Meet are “on” by default. Even with Gemini turned off for one app, “users can still access its data when using Gemini in other apps.” Google’s defaults put AI on unless an administrator turns it off, so someone has to keep watching. We would rather our clients’ documents live with a provider whose business is not built on connecting data.
The control problem with free accounts
- Free accounts belong to a person. When that person leaves, the company can lose its mail, files and every service that resets passwords to that address.
- No central security. You cannot require two-factor sign-in for everyone or switch AI features off company-wide.
- Easy impersonation. Anyone can register a look-alike Gmail address. With your own domain, you can publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, which tell other mail servers what genuine mail from you looks like.
What we recommend
- Own your domain, registered to the company.
- Use business email on that domain through Microsoft 365, in Outlook or on the web in Microsoft Edge. For everything else online, our guide to switching to Brave and Firefox covers the move away from Chrome.
- Move documents to Microsoft 365 on a business plan, managed by your IT provider. We recommend it because Microsoft has not shown the same appetite for mining customer data: for business customers it states that it does not use or share customer data for advertising or mine it for marketing (Microsoft Trust Center), and that prompts, responses and data accessed by Microsoft 365 Copilot are not used to train its foundation AI models (Microsoft Learn, as of September 2026). Those commitments apply to business plans; personal Microsoft accounts have different terms.
- Require two-factor sign-in, filter mail for phishing, and back it up separately.
- If you’re on Google Workspace, plan your move. Our advice is plain: leave. Until you do, have an administrator turn off Gemini and smart features you don’t need; see how to reduce what Google collects.
If you work in a regulated industry, ask us about requirements for your industry. Because email is where most attacks start, read how ransomware gangs pressure victims. For the rest of the Google picture, see Google Chrome and your privacy, leaving Google Search and AI search in 2026.
How FTI helps
Finite Technologies has supported Alaskan businesses since 1990, from one-person offices to large organizations. We are a Microsoft 365 reseller, so we can license Microsoft 365 business plans and bundle them with our managed IT services. We set up email on your own domain, move your existing mail and files across from Google, configure domain authentication, and protect mailboxes with Sophos email security. When you use the Microsoft 365 web apps, we recommend Microsoft Edge; they simply work better there. Backup and day-to-day support come with managed IT, backed by a 24/7 help desk.
