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

201–210 of 372 posts

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

#201

Post by pmlnr »

amelius wrote: post #194

Any good un-Googling tips for someone stuck with an Android phone, Moto G4?

It's harder than it looks.

In theory, there's microg, in reality, if you do a complete un-googling, most push notifications won't come through.

If you do want to try it:

- factory reset the phone to get rid of any google accounts

- root the phone

- get "System app remover (ROOT)"[^1]

- remove all google applications, except google play services and framework

- reboot

- remove remaining google applications

- reboot

- get xposed[^2] and fakegapps[^3] and hope it works

- get microG[^4], maybe through nanodroid[^5]

- pray for it to work

I managed to get this running once, not ever again on a marshmallow based devices, and even when it did, push notification were a lottery, they may or may not work.

[^1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jumobile.m... [^2]: http://repo.xposed.info/ [^3]: http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.thermatk.android.xf.fakeg... [^4]: https://microg.org/ [^5]: https://nanolx.org/nanolx/nanodroid

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

#202

Post by archi42 »

They've been doing that quite a while now. Funnily, they still let me use my workplace, (sometimes) but never my home address.

Just more incentive to move away from Google (which is sad, because the services are great; I'd even pay for them!)

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

#203

Post by icebraining »

trophycase wrote: post #122
user111233 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User error. Don't use your phone while driving.

I wasn't in any real sense. Until of course the view of my next turn was obstructed... Are Uber drivers "using their phone"?

If they're fiddling with the phone while moving, yes. That's an automatic loss of three stars from me. Missing an exit is not a tragedy; hitting someone might be.

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

#204

Post by pmlnr »

I stopped updating the 2 remaning Google applications on my phone - apart from the damned play services, let's not even go there -: maps and translate.

Maps is at 8.4.1[^1]. Before 9, it all worked reasonably, it wasn't giving me the creepy "Are you at ?" push notification, it all just worked. Yes, it's most probably still tracking me, but at least it not _that_ annoying as the new ones.

Translate is at 3.0.12[^2]. v4 was the "let's use AI". What happened in reality: offline translation, english to chinese, v3, 2014: people more or less understood after looking at it long enough. v4, 2016: blank stares at the text, then they gave us Baidu translate. Comparing the 3 things - v3, v4, baidu - v3 and baidu had some resemblance, , v4 was something completely unrelated.

I've seen software "evolving" for 25+ years now, and I'm pretty certain each and every piece of it has a pinnacle, when functionality meets (learnable) usability. After that it's first too many functions, than dumped down interface with not enough functions, then "AI" and non-functioning functionality. There's nearly never a OK, let's take a step back, which is so desperately needed.

As a result, I decided to stop updating some of my software, because it won't get any better for a very long while.

[^1]: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/maps/maps-8-4-1-5-r... [^2]: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/translate/translate...

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

#205

Post by p49k »

maybebad wrote: post #183
system2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s not just the past 18 months. Let’s not forget the “force Google+ down everyone’s throats and make every Google product worse by needlessly rerouting important functionality through G+”

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

#206

Post by SquareWheel »

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...

>Why on earth would you think Google would sell its most valuable asset?

It's such a simple concept, and yet I see people on Hacker News constantly making this mistake. It's as if people are too addicted to outrage culture to even consider the arguments anymore.

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

#207

Post by askmike »

verytrivial wrote: post #186
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 I…

I disagree. When they say "you can only use this feature by opting in our programs that allow you to track us". A lot of people would think that most Google tracking doesn't happen when you don't opt in.

This example shows that that most likely isn't true, since when you disable that setting, they keep all data anyway.

I think it's more of a UX dark pattern where they act like "we only track you if you specifically allow us", but if you don't allow them they will track you anyway, they just do it all behind the scenes.

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

#208

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

steve19 wrote: post #84
hellbanner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their UX continues to g et worse. Google Voice on iOS has had 10-20 second lag (no joke) on older versions of iOS (used to be jus fine!) for 1-2 years now. One previous version of GV in particular froze for 10 seconds on your first key press, now I can't rely on it to open properly, or send messages. It seems intentionally sabotaged. I heard employees quit when G merged the YT with "real name" accounts. Personally I'…

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…

> The add playlist button now defaults to your last playlist, which for me 75% of the time is not the playlist I want.

You can hold the button down ("long press") to get the playlist list instead of waiting for the popup to appear and pressing the button. It is of course still worse than it was before.

Problem is that it defaults to the last playlist I added to, making it unpredictable and inconsistent. It might make more sense if it always defaulted to "Watch Later" but still prompted to change it.

I only have around 5 playlists anyway (basically variants of "Watch Later" but sorted into vague categories).

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

#210

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #141
WalterSear wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlock and commnd the google assistant via a bluetooth device. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, sometimes it would unlock but then be unable to respond to subsequent commands. Then every few days, the feature would disable itself and stop working entirely (via voice or bluetooth) and have to be set up again. The first support person showed me how to clear the application cache, and then walked me throu…

It was discussed on HN a few days ago: the size of the company is inversely proportional to the quality of their support. After the company reaches a certain size, they can simply afford not to care. Also, in this case it makes more business sense for them. Therefore I prefer to deal with smaller companies.

You say this, but I've had some great experiences with Microsoft support over the years, both on the hardware and software side. I hear good things about Apple's support too.
Post reply on HN