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Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

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Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#171

Post by maybebad »

maybebad wrote: post #169
jchw wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there internal uproar? Did they say this was the only "practical" option? I have missed all of this if so, I thought this is how Maps worked since this feature first popped up.

There is only uproar for war contracts... turns out "Do No Evil" isn't as important as "get a paycheck that allows you to live in the most expensive real estate in the known universe"

edit: full disclosure, ex-Googler. I am biased. Met a lot of people who look the other way until even the other way is salty. "I build Google Forms, I do not wrong" ... It is easy to believe you are doing good for the world when you forget your product helps the company take over the world. Again, biased and salty myself

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#172

Post by maxwellito »

rjzzleep wrote: post #163
maxwellito wrote: post #143

But the funny part is Google keep your saved addresses. It only block the access. If you have your home and/or work address set in Gmaps, and you disable all tracking in myactivity.google.com. The address will disappear and GMaps will invite you to reactive App and Web tracking. If you do it, your saved addresses will reappear. This is slightly dodgy.

There is another interesting thing. You need to allow google tracking if you want to do searches in google maps. If you block it maps will crash. Turns out it needs a proper country code to work, regardless of where you're searching.

Really? I got everything disabled in myactivity.google.com (except YouTube history, I need this), but I can still do searches in Maps.

Have you tried from another device or browser?

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#173

Post by kyboren »

hylianwarrior wrote: post #37
maxxxxx wrote: post #18

In a way stuff like this and the recent news that they don't delete their own cookies from Chrome when deleting all cookies could be good news. It seems to become clearer and clearer that Google is getting desperate to squeeze more and more data out of people in order to sell that data. Hope they will lose their good guy image because now they are just another big greedy company like all others. Nothing wrong with th…

Why on earth would you think Google would sell its most valuable asset? Google does not sell user data, it builds on it. The more data they get, the better and better their AI will develop. Looking back, when they announced they were going to become an AI-first company these sort of drastic data-grabs and privacy issues should have been apparent. But hindsight is 20/20...

"Sell your data" is the widely-accepted common term for the business model of a company that analyzes user data in unfathomable detail in order to charge advertiser Johns more money when that company pimps out their users' minds like sex traffickers pimp out the bodies of prostitutes.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#174

Post by maybebad »

lvs wrote: post #34
digitaLandscape wrote: post #26

There was a lot of uproar about this internally but nothing changed. They told us that this was the only "practical" option. The company has rotted.

From the outside, it seems to have reached a tipping point in the past year that is now getting quite dramatic. A whole string of heavy-handed, anti-user, and privacy-hostile decisions. What just happened to the culture that would allow all this evil behavior? Or did we misunderstand it all along?

I believe we are witnessing the result of a company offering not just a series of products but a whole lifestyle, and it is too hard for consumers to live without it. Best game plan you could ever imagine... Internet becomes connectivity, offer free search among connectivity, build products that promote connectivity, step 4: profit.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#175

Post by [deleted] »

jaxondu wrote: post #140
steve19 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I am flogging a dead horse here, but the constant retiring of Google apps makes me reluctant to adopt anything beyond Gmail and Youtube. I am a heavy Google Keep user, but I worry I am going to be kicked off that eventually. > And stop changing your UI. It The Youtube UI just gets worse and worse. I can only imagine what it must be like for non-Youtube Red subscribers. The add playlist button now defaults to y…

One “issue” I have with Keep is there is no way to list notes or search notes without a label. And it’s from a search company. It must be hard for them to implement:-) or there is no more resources on Keep, waiting to be out like Inbox.

[deleted]

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#176

Post by pluma »

hylianwarrior wrote: post #37
maxxxxx wrote: post #18

In a way stuff like this and the recent news that they don't delete their own cookies from Chrome when deleting all cookies could be good news. It seems to become clearer and clearer that Google is getting desperate to squeeze more and more data out of people in order to sell that data. Hope they will lose their good guy image because now they are just another big greedy company like all others. Nothing wrong with th…

Why on earth would you think Google would sell its most valuable asset? Google does not sell user data, it builds on it. The more data they get, the better and better their AI will develop. Looking back, when they announced they were going to become an AI-first company these sort of drastic data-grabs and privacy issues should have been apparent. But hindsight is 20/20...

%s/sell/monetise/g

You know what they meant. Google is milking users for all data they can derive from their activity and creating value from that. It's not so much the use of the data that's the problem as the lengths they go to to create that data.

I recall someone from one of the major tech companies talking about how their users "emit data", implying the data just happens and their role is purely passive with the users practically handing them that data. That's a perverse way of looking at it when you contrast it with e.g. the GDPR's premise that data belongs to the user and companies need (withdrawable) consent to collect and process it.

In the US tech companies don't collect user data, users "emit" it -- even if the only reason the data is "emitted" is because the tech is actively spying on its users' every move.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#177

Post by maybebad »

hammerdahl wrote: post #97
woranl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sundar Pichai is now CEO. What else do you expect?

I feel like this is bigger than just Google. It seems like all of Alphabet is tending in that direction.

Isn't Alphabet the clear "parent" of Google... I'm biased, but we are witnessing the beginning of a monopoly that wasn't imaginable pre-internet. Old rich white men are trembling in their shoes... The take-over game but played better, sexier, and immune. My G-ma loves the Google, so easy even the 90 year olds get it

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#179

Post by maybebad »

hylianwarrior wrote: post #37
maxxxxx wrote: post #18

In a way stuff like this and the recent news that they don't delete their own cookies from Chrome when deleting all cookies could be good news. It seems to become clearer and clearer that Google is getting desperate to squeeze more and more data out of people in order to sell that data. Hope they will lose their good guy image because now they are just another big greedy company like all others. Nothing wrong with th…

Why on earth would you think Google would sell its most valuable asset? Google does not sell user data, it builds on it. The more data they get, the better and better their AI will develop. Looking back, when they announced they were going to become an AI-first company these sort of drastic data-grabs and privacy issues should have been apparent. But hindsight is 20/20...

Google sells user data. They profit amassing data. AI is a nascent technology that Google will happily lead. But until AI is ready, Google will continue to happily sell data - your data, my data, anyone who touches the internet in fact.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#180

Post by icebraining »

pymai wrote: post #132
samstave wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I freaking HATE youtube so much. Its such a vile POS of a service. Its hardly even worth my packets to type out all the ways its so bad. I feel like nobody in charge of YouTube actually even uses it for anything.

im using newpipe on android and adding the rss feeds to newsblur so I can watch on desktop. its actually really good since you get away from their suggestions side bar and autoplay (and the UI). newsblur let's you organise things into subfolders too which is helpful the other thing in going to start using is youtube-dl to download my watch later videos and then use something like emby or plex to watch them. maybe do…

Personally I like the suggestions (everyone complains about clickbait and such, but I'm lucky that I never get those), but Newpipe is definitively a better app than the official.
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