Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 372 posts

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

#181

Post by bb101 »

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?

From a mobile perspective, I used to be heavily invested in the Android ecosystem. Now I use an iPhone and and willingly hand over my Apple tax every few years and will continue to do so whilst I can afford it.

Google's direction is a pity really, as Apple needs a strong competitor in the mobile market to maintain innovation momentum.

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

#182

Post by sundarurfriend »

ENGNR wrote: post #154
dpq wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you post the rest of the quote as well? > I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot…

The reality is that I don’t want a search engine in my phone. Maybe it wasn’t the case when he said that quote, but the story here is they’re trying very hard to blur the line between their services and the device itself, in some very awkward ways that don’t make a lot of sense except except beyond their own business needs

> The reality is that I don’t want a search engine in my phone.

For what it's worth, I've disabled the 'Google' app on my Android phone for a few weeks now, and have experienced no problems. I don't use Google for search, and I already had Chrome disabled too, so all it did was take up some memory and battery, now freed up. All I lost was an extra screen on the mobile "desktop" (which I mostly only accidentally ended up in anyway), and some (generally useless) notifications about "things I might like".

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

#183

Post by maybebad »

system2 wrote: post #24
citrablue wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they want your data in exchange for access to the service they provide? I get it, it's frustrating as hell, but I can understand their perspective.

Yes, a simple take it or leave it situation. There are alternatives. I don't get people getting mad because a private corp is doing something with their own software.

You are so right. I am just frustrated that they reached global ubiquity and treated user data as a for-profit product rather than a for-good application.

In the last 18 months, Google transitioned from being a 'build products people will use to enhance their daily lives' company (with Google profiting immensely but for the enhancement of humankind) to a company that is nonchalant in the sale of human data, often to the detriment of their users' experience

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

#184

Post by pluma »

mikejb wrote: post #123
johnchristopher wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's now common to use "sell your data" as a synonym of "make profit off data" or "sell a service that gives anonymized data".

That may be an explanation, but IMO there's a huge difference between the two, and putting both concepts under the same wording is dangerous. Selling data means surrendering any and every control over it, and if from a user (trust) perspective there's no difference to offering a service based on data, companies will choose the more lucrative one.

There's a difference. But in practice the difference doesn't matter.

As a user you expect a reasonable level of privacy unless the software explicitly requests your consent for providing certain information or explicitly asks you to provide that information manually. If the software then hands that information off to a third party you expect that only to happen with explicit consent.

The problem in this case is that Google isn't interested in consent. It tries to get as much information as it can without needing to ask for consent and when it does ask for consent it's through coercion by tying that consent request to actions that are not reflective of the scope of the request ("You want to save your home location? Okay but in order to do that we need to be able to track your every move forever").

That's arguably far more malicious than explicitly saying "please let us share this info with company XYZ so we can continue offering this service for free". That most companies selling data to third parties aren't so explicit about it is irrelevant -- this is just about the claim that "selling data" is inherently more malicious than what Google is doing.

That said, no, selling does not mean "surrendering any and every control over it". GDPR and friends specifically address that by stating that the human being the data is about continues to own that data and can withdraw consent at any time (at any depth of sharing).

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

#186

Post by verytrivial »

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.

> This is slightly dodgy.

It is punitive. They are (and are within their rights to) withholding value because you aren't giving them what they want, which is mineable activity information.

I notice that there are always cartoons of happy users getting additional useful features from their services when tracking is enbled, but never cute cartoons of the other actors extracting value based upon advertising etc. Truth In Condescending Explain-o-Toons, now! etc.

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

#187

Post by pdkl95 »

inapis wrote: post #120
Analemma_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re creating a need, but that doesn’t mean they’re creating a market opportunity. Google has taught everyone that all this stuff should be free, and that’s no accident: it’s a deliberate strategy to suck up all available oxygen away from potential competitors. Someone (Ben Thompson maybe?) described Google’s strategy as not just building a moat, but scorching the earth for hundreds of miles in every direction fro…

This is so fucking true. If anything you can see this in the real marketplace. Consumers have become so averse to paying for software because they see gmail, google maps, google keep, docs and photos as available for “free” - meaning they have to part with something from their life but not the cash, so why the hell pay for anything else?

Even worse than undermining expectations about the price of software, since google's general use apps (gmail, docs, etc.) are Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS[1]), Google is also undermining the basic concept of buying a copy of software. Even as an intangible good, it's easy to understand the value of owning a copy that you get to keep and use on your own terms. When the same software is only available as a service, availability issues and other risks that outside your control make the service less valuable.

Why should someone want to buy software when most of the software they see and use regularly are unreliable services?

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

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

#188

Post by icebraining »

singularity2001 wrote: post #127
computerfriend wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or did we misunderstand it all along? I think yes. Google has been considered "evil" by the tinfoil hat crowd for quite some time, and once again it has become apparent to the mainstream that they were right.

Google died when Smith said you have no privacy now[0]. Well I have no Google now. Fallback almost never used. [0] can't find actual quote, did I dream? Quoth: “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about”

You didn't dream: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/04/google_ericisms/

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

#190

Post by isolli »

rjzzleep wrote: post #166
jorblumesea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most large companies have a "jump the shark" moment where business needs and biz dev take over the engineering/product side and starts running the show unilaterally. It becomes less of an equal affair and more dictating terms. Microsoft's was in the 90s in the os/browser wars.

Same thing happened to Sun Solaris

Do you have more information on this? I would be interested.
Post reply on HN