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Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

bradfrost.com

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Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#251

Post by Zarath »

creaghpatr wrote: post #14

I've always found it kind of alarming in Waze that when you stop at an intersection where there's a gas station they prompt you to enter an updated gas price...even when the app presumes you are the driver. I get that they're trying to get everyone to chip in for the common good but not while I'm literally driving, please.

I was using Google Maps the other day through Safari and got a pop up to download the app during the middle of the route and I could barely see the map. I nearly got in an accident trying to dismiss the pop up.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#252

Post by fixermark »

chillingeffect wrote: post #219
Anderkent wrote: post #9

Hm. I find google map reviews fairly useful, and so don't mind contributing. I don't know why my phone figuring out if I'm near a restaurant I would like is creepy? It's nowhere near as creepy as find my device, which everyone seems OK with.

You're probably not thinking adversarially. Most of us aren't. Most of us love all the features of technology. However, there are bad apples in society, seeking shortcuts through taking from others and harming them. And there are guardians in society, constantly looking for vectors that a baddie can cause harm to protect them. One emerging vector is the combination of market data to target individuals for threat and…

If one doesn't trust Google as a data steward, I can totally see one being deeply concerned about these data-request notifications and about the system knowing their geolocation.

... but I can't follow why one would then continue to use Google Maps.

... or a phone running an OS that Google writes and maintains.

... or, in the case of this particular blog-post, https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.6.26/webfont...

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#253

Post by fenwick67 »

soared wrote: post #226
fenwick67 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO advertising systems that have this intimate of knowledge about you are immoral because they undermine a consumer's agency well beyond traditional demographic-level or local advertising. Google didn't just look at the fact that you were searching for tents online to serve you that ad. They looked at how old you are, what time of day you are most susceptible to clicking on ads, who your friends are and what they li…

> Google didn't just look at the fact that you were searching for tents online to serve you that ad. They looked at how old you are, what time of day you are most susceptible to clicking on ads, who your friends are and what they like, your address, your preferred colors and letters... It's possible that they figured out you just broke up with your SO and use shopping as a coping skill, so it was time to pull out the…

> google doesn't do things like look at your specific address, preferred colors, etc

Who are you to say they don't try and figure out your favorite color based on all of their input data? If Google shared exactly how their secret sauce advertising algorithms work, they'd be out of business.

> You can opt out of all behavior based advertiser very easily: http://optout.networkadvertising.org and http://optout.aboutads.info/#!/

If these companies wanted to respect users' wishes in a frictionless way, they'd just look at my DNT header. This is bread and circus.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#254

Post by [deleted] »

jandrese wrote: post #73
Sephr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't prevent your cell carrier from tracking you.

Sure you're still tracked, but at least Verizon isn't creepily reminding you of it. The blog author freaked out because Google is trying to crowdsource info about a place from people who are actually visiting it, which they know because their phone has location tracking. I think the author might want to step back and think about everything his phone can do before getting worked up over this one minor aspect.

[deleted]

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#255

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #144
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #88

The real question is: is this creepy or ingenious? The reality is that their products are the best because they are able to crowdsource the masses for practically free. Google Maps- How do you think they are so good with traffic and or know when a place is busy? [Google admits it tracked user location data even when the setting was turned off]( https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location... ) Tensorf…

reCAPTCHA is a freaking nightmare, it's gotten worse and worse, it often has me go through two or three pages worth of image recognition puzzles before letting me log in. And since it's used on non-Google sites, it's nearly unavoidable.

I got one the other day asking me to click on the “crosswalks”.

Seriously, Google, amongst the vast trove of information you hold on me/my IP address will be “in Britain”, so maybe try writing in British English rather than using a word that 90% of us won’t understand.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#256

Post by beat »

Raphmedia wrote: post #234
beat wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me uncomfortably of someone I saw yesterday arguing that you shouldn't get a flu shot because it makes your immune system lazy. Memory is complicated and difficult. It can be trained, but we only have so much bandwidth for it. It's very nice to have automation to "remember" for us, so we can stop wasting that limited bandwidth on things that don't much matter, like details of our dinner experience, and s…

I can't get in the details because I'm no neurologist but there are a lot of news stories out there about how taxi drivers end up with a great memories from having to remember all the routes. There are also stories about how taxi drivers using GPS don't have all those memory improvements. I agree that news stories are not the best source of accurate scientific information so take it with a grain of salt. https://www.…

Depends on what you're memorizing, too. You can be good at remembering some things, but not others. Lots of fields have specialized training exercises for memorization - consider how you learn vocabulary in a new language, for example.

This can get tied to "muscle memory" as well. I'm currently going through a lot of this on guitar - two note per string pull-off exercises, in the interest of learning Eric Johnson style picking techniques. Much of the core of his playing is based on two notes per string, first the high note and then the low note. So deep muscle memory of that particular move helps me do other, larger things.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#257

Post by ucaetano »

roma1n wrote: post #249
ucaetano wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's an open question that Google could solve by providing said option. One dollar a month for the complete suite of google tools with no tracking or ads whatsoever? "No tracking" only, not "no ads". No ads would be far more expensive. But you can actually do it: buy a corporate account from them and then use an ad blocker. As simple as that. Now go and put your money where your mouth is :)

Why would it be more expensive? Google's annual revenue is 13 billion for around 1.3 billion users. That is $10 per user per year or less than $1 per user per month. Google certainly has a rationale for not providing a subscription option, but it is not 'raw revenue'

Because not all users use the same services in the same way, so that would actually lead to a mass breakdown in the services.

That's not how companies price services. Not by very, very, very far.

There are many pricing strategies designed to make heavy users pay more and light users pay less, or rich users pay more and poor users pay less.

Ideally, a company would charge a different price from every single user, and that price would be max(100% of the willingness to pay for that user, marginal cost of that user).

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#258

Post by mankash666 »

rpowers wrote: post #222
mankash666 wrote: post #102

Concur completely. The practical alternative - an iPhone, is worse in other ways. In the history of general purpose computing, never ever has a company sold hardware to the customer transferring ownership rights to the customer, and then locked the device up to apps approved by the hardware manufacturer, going as far as taking a 30% cut. How this is flying past regulators is anyone's guess, and as more time progresse…

Not a hard decision at all. There are very few apps you cannot already purchase for the iPhone or cannot write yourself with a free developer profile.

"cannot write yourself with a free developer profile" --> THIS is complete disconnect with the potential end user, unless the app is for iPhone developers.

The world is comprised of 99.9999999999999999999% non iOS developers

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#259

Post by godelski »

nkurz wrote: post #228
turc1656 wrote: post #210

Serious question for the HN community - why do you leave your GPS on/activated by default? I have mine disabled unless I specifically need it for something, which is rare. Usually the only time I ever need GPS is for driving instructions. Otherwise, it's off. GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. Why would you leave this on? Do you all use it far more frequently or was it something you never thought to s…

Good comment. Might be worth mentioning that turning GPS off reduces the accuracy of your location, but does not prevent it from being known: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location... GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. I'd be surprised that this is true. I used several battery monitor apps on several phones, and never found this to the case. It's a simple receiver, and doesn't re…

I have noticed it on all my phones. On my Pixel 2 I usually get 2-3 days of battery life. But if I use maps and don't force close the app after I'm done my battery will barely last a day. So I'd call GPS (or more accurately the Maps app) my biggest battery hog, and by far.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#260

Post by [deleted] »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #105

People in this thread are clutching their pearls about invasion of privacy and are going on about how they won't do any free work for Google yet hardly any of them has voluntarily given a dime to Google in return of the tons of services they get from it. Where do you think all the reviews come from? Who puts information about traffic cops on Waze? From a million monkeys smashing keyboards?

[deleted]
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