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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

#291

Post by oblio »

taneq wrote: post #290
oblio wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I read some posts from a former employee. The ad model was there from day 1 and people can't just act like Page and Brin are brilliant yet failed to see the potential for harm in their business model.

There's a difference between "serve ads next to web search results" and "harvest literally every data point we can befuddle or coerce people into giving up."

This is from back in 2006: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/08/01/can-your-programmi... And the sentiment was present even before the date of that article.

More precisely:

> The very fact that Google invented MapReduce, and Microsoft didn’t, says something about why Microsoft is still playing catch up trying to get basic search features to work, while Google has moved on to the next problem: building Skynet^H^H^H^H^H^H the world’s largest massively parallel supercomputer. I don’t think Microsoft completely understands just how far behind they are on that wave.

People were joking about Google ingesting all the data they could to build an AI, 12+ years ago.

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

#292

Post by vagab0nd »

polkadotted wrote: post #221

I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…

I completely agree on the Maps experience. These days I'm constantly annoyed by it. When I search for a place the map jumps around like crazy, causing me to lose track of my current focus area and my points of interest from previous search. Not to mention the hiccups on 3rd party browsers.

There was a post on HN a while back which compares Google Maps with traditional paper maps. It had a lot of insights I wish I could find it.

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

#293

Post by mikelward »

larkeith wrote: post #279
ubercow13 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with YouTube?

Separate from the recommendation problems, which seem to vary by person, the site has gotten substantially worse for mobile players, to the point I've almost entirely stopped using it: - The mobile page does not allow quality selection, and always selects quality options far below what would be supported by your connection (It sometimes drops to 240p, and I have not seen it select anything above 480p, yet can easily…

Does it select low quality when you're on Wi-Fi, or on cellular?

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

#294

Post by cwyers »

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…

> 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.

What I don't understand is when we started expecting _anything other than this_ in a commercial transaction. Google's whole thing is they give out services in exchange for information.

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

#295

Post by mikelward »

endorphone wrote: post #276
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple has absolutely fantastic support, and remain outrageously profitable regardless. Years back I bought a Nexus and chose an engraving option. I got the phone and it wasn't engraved so I contacted Google mostly to make sure I wasn't going to be shipped multiple phones (after battling the various prevent you from contacting us bosses). I mean, I bought the phone from them, from their site, with Google branding on i…

Wow, HTC. That must have been a while ago. Was it a Nexus One?

I think the relationship was similar for the LG and Huawei Nexuses, but Google is now the "manufacturer" for the Pixel line, so hopefully things have improved.

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

#296

Post by verytrivial »

cwyers wrote: post #294
verytrivial wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. What I don't understand is when we started expecting _anything other than this_ in a commercial transaction. Google's whole thing is they give out services in exchange for information.

You and I know that, but that's not what it says on the tin.

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

#297

Post by clubm8 »

I am a privacy conscious person, I've been using the Here We Go app on iOS for directions:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id...

It has very cool feature - offline maps. By downloading your state/country's maps, you don't have to query a server for every little mapping request.

Between this app and saved podcasts, I'm able to switch off my mobile large chunks of the day.

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

#298

Post by drb91 »

lentil_soup wrote: post #237
polkadotted wrote: post #221

I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…

A bit of a side note, but we should avoid saying things like "not sure why people are surprised" or similar, like in a few other comments. It is true that Google has done this several times over, but we shouldn't normalize it as nothing new, move on. We should still call it out each and every time we see it, even if we are repeating ourselves. Also, what might be obvious to our community is not to those outside, whic…

> We should still call it out each and every time we see it, even if we are repeating ourselves.

Seems like the right response would be to stop using the problem products. If you think you can't afford to, I hope you like Google. This is in no way surprising.

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

#299

Post by costcopizza »

clubm8 wrote: post #297

I am a privacy conscious person, I've been using the Here We Go app on iOS for directions: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id... It has very cool feature - offline maps. By downloading your state/country's maps, you don't have to query a server for every little mapping request. Between this app and saved podcasts, I'm able to switch off my mobile large chunks of the day.

Big fan of Here We Go and the UI as well.

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

#300

Post by clubm8 »

degenerate wrote: post #245
polkadotted wrote: post #221

I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…

The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome.

> The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome.

Reminds me of when Microsoft used to optimize it's products for Windows and other OSs were an afterthought...

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