What "Additional Services" are there besides those listed in the "Additional Services" section?

[herzog]

There is a setting in the "Additional Services" section of the Admin Console that administrators can turn On or Off for an OU called "Additional services without individual control". This setting seems to act like an "Other" option to enable or disable services such as Google Colab, Google Surveys, and Chromecast that aren't specifically listed in the "Additional Services".

My question is: What Additional Services are included in this setting? Why isn't there a list somewhere that will tell us admins what will happen if we turn that setting On or Off? It's wild to me that I have no way of knowing what services will stop working if I change that setting to Off.

[herzog]

A fellow person on this journey:

https://privacyishard.net/g-suite-admin-and-managing-services-that-arent-controlled-individually/

[herzog]

Bump.

[herzog]

Bump.

[herzog]

Bump.

[max_e]

Bump.

[cryptochrome]

What you see in "Additional Services" is the complete list. It's multiple pages long. The link to go to the next page is not very obvious, I missed it myself when I first explored that section.

What "Additional Services" really means is this: It contains ALL Google services and apps that are not part of Google Workspace and for which you do not get support from Google. These services have nothing to do with Workspace and can be safely disabled or enabled. It will not have an impact on your Workspace.

The reason Google lists them there is that it allows you to control whether your users can access (log in to) those services using their Google Workspace account. If you allow access, you just won't get any support on the services you enable. That's really it. Nothing else.

Some services in "Additional Services" can be used with Google Workspace, like Google Assistant support. But again, they are not supported. Another example would be you want to allow your marketing team to access Google Search Console and Google Analytics. All of that can be done in "Additional Services". 

The key is: Additional Services are not part of Google Workspace, hence they are listed separately, have no real configuration in the admin console and don't receive support from Google. 

I hope that makes sense and clarifies it. 

[herzog]

My request on this post is not to define what "Additional Services" means. It is to get a list of services affected by the "Additional Services Without Individual Control" setting.

[cryptochrome]

If you go to "Additional Services", you will see all the services. There is no other list. 

[max_e]

then what does the setting do exactly? As I understand it, there are services _not on this list_ that can't individually be controlled, but instead just get bulk-enabled or -disabled. What we would like to know is what kind of services are in this bulk. Please help us understand. Note that they are explicitly excluded from the ones individually controlled with the on/off setting (such as "Applied Digital Skills" and "Blogger").

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7646040?product_name=UnuFlow&visit_id=637983373644164392-5632529...

[cryptochrome]

Oh, now I see what you mean. Ok, this is really just a placeholder for "All Google Services". There are probably way too many to list. I wouldn't worry about it because as I said, everything listed under "Additional Services" does not pertain to your Google Workspace subscription. You can safely disable it if you are concerned that your users might use some Google services you don't want them to use. It won't have any effect on Workspace. 

[herzog]

Okay. I'll be more specific to my situation.

That "Additional Services Without Individual Control" setting, in our case, defaulted to On at some point after becoming GSuite Google Workspace customers in 2007. It has been On ever since and just came to our attention last year. Pretty much every Additional Service is Off for our domain... and I originally made this post because I wanted to know more concretely what other Google services that our users might be using today would be disabled should we decide to turn that setting Off. For example, Google Colab was part of the "Additional Services Without User Control", and just recently graduated to having its own setting in the Additional Services list. Users on my domain were using Colab and I wasn't aware of it (since there are no analytics or audit tools for this). What other services might I break if I change the setting to Off today?

Anyway. Thanks for your thoughts, @cryptochrome. I still would like somebody (preferably Google) to have a list somewhere that tells admins what other services are under this "Other" umbrella.

[herzog]

Bump.

Also, that guy's blog post about this topic is gone. Here's an IA mirror.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210324152244/https://privacyishard.net/g-suite-admin-and-managing-serv...