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

See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

support.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 117 posts

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#81

Post by beaner »

ve55 wrote: post #74
beaner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have my email receipts, what's the difference? I use venmo - they have it too. My credit card companies are private companies. Where's the outrage regarding them? Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news.

>Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news. We know for a fact data was at least shared with the NSA in the past. We also know Google complies with legal requests, could have a partial data breach in the future, could change terms or undergo some type of merger or acquisition which would include your data, etc. The point here is that it is completely outside of your control. I…

Yeah, but now you're changing the argument from selling data for profit to simply complying with the law.

If Google complying with the law is something someone feels at-risk for, then I understand not choosing to use them. But that's really a lesson that goes for any centralized service.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#82

Post by Aunche »

krishanath wrote: post #58
partiallypro wrote: post #31

When I first read this was I was troubled, and I am certainly a Google critic, but it seems to specifically say this is for your usage only. It's not being used for their ad network or for them to see behavior. It's used in the same manner as tracking packages, etc. If or when they start using this for their own internal usage to see use purchasing behavior, and telling adwords customers what purchase/products were p…

If a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. So today you don't see a major problem. Even though every single purchase you made in your entire life is being logged in a central database that's out of your control. OK. You are slowly being brought to a boil, and…

The legend of the frog being boiled slowly is actually completely false (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog). The frog will simply jump out when it notices that it gets too hot. Likewise, it's pretty easy to see the distinction between Google using information to help people vs. using information for profit.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#83

Post by romed »

tern wrote: post #37

> You don't have any purchases Any idea why I might not see any purchases here?

Maybe you’ve never used Inbox? Or you’re using gmail for gsuite or .edu? There are lots of features that are only enabled for gmail.com accounts, and there are many features that got triggered by using Inbox even if you later changed back to gmail.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#84

Post by blihp »

olliej wrote: post #75
mcny wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't this be done offline? Where? On every device a user owns?

Yes. A better question would be “why does google itself need this information when it’s just a client side UI feature?”

Because... Google's business model. Your ability to see your purchase history on a Google page is neat, but it seems a safe bet that the real reason they want your purchase history is because their profile about you as a set of eyeballs becomes more valuable allowing them to charge higher rates on ads. Notice that they only claimed to have stopped scraping gmail for ad targeting purposes, not that they stopped scraping period.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#85

Post by ve55 »

beaner wrote: post #81
ve55 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news. We know for a fact data was at least shared with the NSA in the past. We also know Google complies with legal requests, could have a partial data breach in the future, could change terms or undergo some type of merger or acquisition which would include your data, etc. The point here is that it is completely outside of your control. I…

Yeah, but now you're changing the argument from selling data for profit to simply complying with the law. If Google complying with the law is something someone feels at-risk for, then I understand not choosing to use them. But that's really a lesson that goes for any centralized service.

I haven't claimed that Google sells your data for a profit. Other centralized services carry risks as well, but some of them have profit models that are focused on something other than scooping up every bit of data possible, with some even having profit models specifically focused on the opposite.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#86

Post by romed »

fitzroy wrote: post #19

I've always assumed they do this since they've recognized and surfaced flight and event information for years. I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable. Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you p…

Your agreement with Google allows them to use your data on your behalf. The feature you suggested uses your data to benefit other people, or other people’s data to benefit you. Even when aggregated that violates the agreement.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#88

Post by ndnxhs »

saagarjha wrote: post #53
romed wrote: post #17

A very good feature of gmail’s extensive “email intelligence” that grew out of Inbox. How did you think the Purchases label worked? How did you think Google Now alerts you on your mobile when your packages are delivered? If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label works. Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay your bills.

Why can't this be done offline?

It can if everyone was willing to pay for the developer time.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#90

Post by smallnamespace »

saagarjha wrote: post #53
romed wrote: post #17

A very good feature of gmail’s extensive “email intelligence” that grew out of Inbox. How did you think the Purchases label worked? How did you think Google Now alerts you on your mobile when your packages are delivered? If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label works. Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay your bills.

Why can't this be done offline?

To build offline, Google would still need access to (some subset) of data at some point to train the models / write the heuristics.
Post reply on HN