This question gets asked with a specific fear behind it: is Google reading my manuscript and feeding it into an AI model somewhere. It's worth answering honestly rather than either dismissing the concern or overstating it, because the real picture is more specific than either extreme.
What Google actually does with a private document
Google does not use private Google Docs content, Workspace or consumer, to train its AI models without your permission. A document isn't treated as "public" just because it lives in the cloud; unless you specifically publish it to the web in a way that makes it indexable, it stays outside the training data Google draws from. What Google's 2023 policy update actually expanded was the use of publicly available internet content, the kind that's already indexed from public websites and forums, not private files sitting in someone's Drive.
This is worth stating plainly because it's a common and understandable point of confusion, not because there's nothing worth being careful about.
The privacy considerations that are actually real
The realistic risks with Google Docs have more to do with accounts and access than content scanning:
- Account access. Your manuscript lives behind a Google account login. A compromised password, a locked account, or a billing or policy issue on the account can block your own access to your own files until it's resolved.
- Sharing settings. A document set to "anyone with the link" rather than restricted sharing is a common, easy mistake, and the consequence is real: anyone who gets that link can read a manuscript you meant to keep private.
- Third-party extensions. Any browser extension or Docs add-on you've granted access to (grammar checkers, AI writing assistants, research tools) has its own separate relationship with your document content, governed by that specific tool's terms, not Google's. This is genuinely the category worth the most scrutiny, since a smaller or less established add-on may have far looser data practices than Google itself.
Where an offline app removes the question entirely
None of this makes Google Docs unsafe to write in. It does mean the actual privacy surface is account access and third-party add-ons, not Google itself reading your prose. A local-first app sidesteps the account-access category specifically, since there's no login gating access to your own files in the first place. Quillen stores every manuscript as plain files on your own computer, works fully offline, and requires no account to use, so the question of who can access your files through a compromised or locked login simply doesn't apply.
Common questions
Does Google train its AI models on my private Google Docs?
No, not without your permission. Google does not use private Workspace or consumer Docs content to train its AI models. What Google does train on is publicly available web content, meaning a document only enters that category if you specifically publish it to the web.
What's the actual privacy risk with writing a novel in Google Docs?
The most realistic risks are account-based rather than content-scanning ones: a compromised or locked Google account blocking access to your own work, accidental sharing settings, or any third-party extension or AI writing add-on you've installed having its own, separate access to your documents.