Google made a quiet but significant change to how it collects data from users. A nested privacy setting called Search Services History — enabled by default — now captures the photos you run through Google Lens, the audio from your voice searches, files you upload to Google Translate, and media submitted through Search Live. If you disabled Web & App Activity years ago and assumed that covered everything, it doesn’t.
This isn’t a fringe change buried in fine print. It affects any Google account used for visual search, voice queries, or file uploads across a wide range of Google products: Search, Maps, Shopping, Flights, Hotels, Translate, and News, as well as AI Mode threads that include uploaded files.
Understanding what changed, what it actually does, and how to turn it off requires untangling a few layers of overlapping settings — which is exactly what this post does.
What Is Search Services History?
Search Services History is a new privacy setting Google added to the My Google Activity dashboard. It sits under a parent toggle called Save Media, which itself is a sub-setting of Web & App Activity.
The core function: when enabled, Google saves the media you submit through Search-related services — Lens photos, voice recordings, uploaded documents — alongside your activity history. This saved media is then eligible to be used for AI model training.
The practical implication is significant. When you photograph a restaurant menu through Lens to get a translation, take a voice screenshot of a map route, or upload a document to Translate, that media is now being stored and potentially used to improve Google’s AI models — unless you have specifically toggled this off.
Why Your Old Opt-Out May Not Be Enough
Many privacy-conscious users disabled Web & App Activity years ago, under the understanding that doing so would prevent Google from saving and using their activity. For most purposes, that was accurate.
The new Search Services History setting is structured as a sub-component of Web & App Activity. Google’s documentation says that disabling Web & App Activity entirely will carry your preference forward and prevent Search Services History from activating. But the reverse isn’t true: if Web & App Activity is on (even partially), Search Services History defaults to on — and collecting photos, audio, and files — unless you explicitly disable the Save Media sub-toggle or Search Services History itself.
In other words: a general opt-out doesn’t automatically cover the new sub-setting. If you enabled Web & App Activity for some features but assumed media wasn’t being collected, that assumption is now outdated.
What Data Is Actually Captured
The setting captures media submitted through Search services — specifically:
Google Lens photos. When you hold your camera up to something and use Lens to identify it, translate it, or shop for it, that image is now saved if Search Services History is active.
Voice recordings. Audio from voice search queries, Search Live conversations, and Ask Maps sessions with voice input is captured.
Uploaded files. Files and images you upload to Google Translate, Google Search, or similar tools are included.
Text in conversations. The threads in AI Mode and Ask Maps that contain file uploads or media are also covered by the setting.
What’s explicitly not captured under this setting: photos stored in Google Photos. Google has said that personal images sitting in your library are not used for training AI models outside of Photos-specific features. The Search Services History setting applies to media you actively submit through search interfaces, not to your stored library.
Which Products This Touches
The scope is broader than “just Google Search.” The setting applies across:
- Google Search (including AI Mode)
- Google Maps and Ask Maps
- Google Translate (file uploads)
- Google Shopping, Flights, and Hotels
- Google News
- Google Lens (accessed from any surface)
- Search Live (real-time audio conversation with Google’s AI)
This means a user who never uses traditional Google Search but regularly uses Maps with voice input, or Translate with document uploads, is still affected.
The EU Signal
One telling detail: Search Services History defaults to off in the EU, UK, and Japan. Users in those regions don’t have to do anything — the setting is disabled at account creation.
This geographic difference is not accidental. Google’s own default-on decision in other markets reflects a deliberate calculation about what regulators will accept, not a technical determination about what is necessary for the service to function. Where GDPR or equivalent protections apply, Google treats the practice as one requiring opt-in. Elsewhere, it defaults to opt-in.
For users outside the EU and UK, the default setting is the one that benefits Google’s AI training pipeline.
How to Opt Out
There are three ways to address this, depending on how much control you want:
Option 1: Disable Search Services History directly. Go to myactivity.google.com → navigate to “Search Services History” → toggle it off. This stops photos, audio, and uploaded files from being saved under this setting while leaving other activity settings unchanged.
Option 2: Disable the “Save Media” sub-toggle. Under Web & App Activity settings, find the “Save Media” subsetting and disable it. This prevents images, audio, and video from being saved while preserving other aspects of your search history (like text queries).
Option 3: Disable Web & App Activity entirely. If you want the broadest opt-out, disabling Web & App Activity altogether covers Search Services History as a downstream effect. Google has confirmed this. The tradeoff: some personalized features (like resuming AI Mode conversations) will not function.
None of these options require a full Google account deletion or signing out of services. They take effect immediately.
The Broader Pattern
Google’s restructuring of these settings illustrates a consistent pattern: opt-outs that once felt comprehensive need to be re-examined when new settings are introduced.
The average user who disabled Web & App Activity did so expecting it to act as a durable, forward-looking privacy preference. The introduction of Search Services History as a separate, default-on toggle effectively created a new category of data collection that the old opt-out didn’t retroactively cover.
This isn’t unique to Google. Most large platforms use a similar architecture: a general privacy toggle that covers existing categories, with new categories launched as separate opt-outs rather than inheriting prior preferences. The responsibility to re-audit falls on the user each time a new setting appears.
If you haven’t checked your Google privacy settings recently, now is a good time. Settings that were accurate a year ago may not reflect the current state of what’s being collected.
What “Training Data” Actually Means for Your Photos
When Google saves a Lens photo for AI training, that image doesn’t stay associated with your account in the way a Google Photos library image does. It typically enters a training pipeline that uses the image to improve model performance — teaching the AI to better recognize objects, translate text in images, or understand visual queries.
But from a practical standpoint, you’ve handed Google a sample of your visual environment: the books on your shelf, the documents on your desk, the labels in your kitchen, the storefronts you photograph on your commute. These aren’t abstract data points. They’re slices of your daily life.
The question isn’t whether training data is handled responsibly inside Google’s infrastructure. The question is whether you intended to contribute it. For most users who ran photos through Lens without knowing this setting existed, the answer is probably not deliberately.
How daftei Handles This Differently
daftei doesn’t use your uploaded photos or files to train AI models — third-party or otherwise. The business model is a subscription; the service doesn’t need to extract value from your content to function.
Files are encrypted in transit with TLS 1.3 and at rest with AES-256. There’s no “Save Media” equivalent — no sub-setting that silently starts collecting your uploads for a purpose you didn’t sign up for. daftei is GDPR and CCPA compliant and doesn’t show ads or sell user data.
For photos and files you want stored without becoming training inputs, that’s the model: storage is the service, and the service doesn’t expand its scope without your knowledge.
Checking Your Settings
If you’re a Google account user, the path to reviewing this is straightforward: visit myactivity.google.com, look for Web & App Activity settings, and check whether Search Services History and Save Media are enabled.
It takes two minutes. Given that the data involved includes images of your physical environment and recordings of your voice, it’s two minutes well spent.