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New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

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Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#201

Post by creato »

StavrosK wrote: post #164
stickfigure wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, although perhaps they named the switch poorly. My guess is that the product manager is trying to provide a single simple "privacy fiend" setting. You apparently want fine-grained privacy controls ("save my personal locations, but not my search history"). It's reasonable to want that, but it seems awfully entitled (not you, but many others on this thread) to demand it. Especially si…

This is disingenuous and unreasonable. The setting is unnecessarily restrictive. It's simple: "Do you want us to store your data on our servers?" Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. This is nowhere near a product problem. The setti…

> Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally.

I think you are ridiculously underestimating the complexity and issues that would arise with two separate mechanisms for saving the same kind of data, and an option to switch between the two. Do you download account-saved locations locally when changing to local storage? What if there are conflicting pieces of data?

I bet there would be a lot more outraged people about the bugs and limitations that would arise with this system than there are today with your complaints.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#202

Post by akhilcacharya »

mulmen wrote: post #104
jerf wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the native app, albeit in beta, so you may not have it yet. You can turn on smile functionality in the app, but you must turn on all notifications. "Also what does Amazon have to do with SV?" Amazon is part of metaphorical Silicon Valley. So's Microsoft, for instance. Metaphorical Silicon Valley is too large to fit in literal Silicon Valley.

Is IBM included in metaphorical Silicon Valley? What about Expedia? Or Concur? Seems very arbitrary. Is metaphorical Silicon Valley only applicable to negative actions of tech companies or does it apply to all big tech companies? I searched for “metaphorical Silicon Valley” and didn’t see anything relevant. Also how did you get into this beta and where is the actual option? Is it under notifications? I’d prefer to us…

They aren't because they don't have the new tech prestige.

I'd say Amazon is on the borderline, IMO.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#203

Post by stickfigure »

StavrosK wrote: post #164
stickfigure wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, although perhaps they named the switch poorly. My guess is that the product manager is trying to provide a single simple "privacy fiend" setting. You apparently want fine-grained privacy controls ("save my personal locations, but not my search history"). It's reasonable to want that, but it seems awfully entitled (not you, but many others on this thread) to demand it. Especially si…

This is disingenuous and unreasonable. The setting is unnecessarily restrictive. It's simple: "Do you want us to store your data on our servers?" Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. This is nowhere near a product problem. The setti…

[flagged]

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#204

Post by miguelmota »

Big companies will break laws because they can afford to and the data they collect provides more value to them than the price of the penalty.

Lawsuits like this have become the norm now and don't think it'll change any time soon.

The majority of people will always choose convenience over privacy and remain on these platforms even after reading headlines like this.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#205

Post by davb »

samsolomon wrote: post #161
sephoric wrote: post #134

Ethically I think the good old days of software products were superior to the current days of software services . Services are paid for by subscription or ads or selling data, so that they are forced to optimize for continued use. Products are sold as-is, with the hope that they are useful enough that enough people will buy them once and own it forever. It should work this way: you spend N months making a useful prod…

On the other hand I think subscriptions have vastly improved the quality of software. Having to win your customer's business every month or year forces the product to continue improving. If the product doesn't get better, then customers leave.

I disagree. I think vendor lock-in is actually much worse with SaaS because you rarely control your own data or infrastructure. Quality can slowly erode over time and migrating from one SaaS provider to another is often more technically and contractually onerous than migrating between on-premises software products. SaaS apps are often data silos, where interoperability is no longer a necessity (or selling point).

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#206

Post by maxxxxx »

dzader wrote: post #197
maxxxxx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Tying setting the home address to search history is pretty sleazy and there is no good explanation for this other than bullying people into turning on tracking. I am really getting tired of companies that want to suck up every piece of data.

Curious why you feel so entitled that you think Google should provide you with their free mapping service and features with nothing in exchange?

I don't feel entitled and I rarely use them but it's still sleazy behavior. There are a lot of people who don't understand what consequences using Google or Facebook has to their privacy and these companies happily prey on them.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#207

Post by jstarfish »

nathankunicki wrote: post #188
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who was forcing the many famous Victorian philanthropist industrialists to build their railway and model villages, with free schools, hospitals and more for workers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_village

That was definitely for their benefit of their workers rather than the greater society, and on the whole doesn't seem much different than the larger Silicon Valley companies of today. Take Facebook for example. They have a large utopian-esque campus for the benefits of their workers. In this campus they have bikes for getting around, free bars and restaurants (and an ice cream shop), an on campus doctor, bicycle repa…

> and in fact have somehow managed to convince CBP and USCIS to visit their campus to conduct Global Entry and Visa interviews instead of the workers having to travel to an office.

Not to detract from your point, but this is a common service for employers above a certain size-- not some shady negotiation. My last few (not even close to FAANG) employers have all offered this perk.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#208

Post by cjarrett »

rifung wrote: post #180
levesque wrote: post #4

I tried using Google Maps without search history turned on. It's basically a downgraded version. They tied saving locations with the search history, so it won't let you search for friends' contacts, set a home address, etc. Is it on purpose? I don't know, but I find it weird that they would tie some unrelated features together. Why does setting a Home address require search history?

> Is it on purpose? I don't know, but I find it weird that they would tie some unrelated features together. Why does setting a Home address require search history? I work at Google but not on Maps, opinions are my own. I don't know if this is why they did it that way, but it wouldn't surprise me if the reason was merely that 99.9% of users opt in to location sharing and the developers didn't feel it useful to spend t…

>If a developer is career driven (and many if not most are) they have to work on "high impact" things to get a good performance review. Since Google tries to be very objective, you have to measure your impact with data and sadly 0.1% of users is not really considered impactful. Unfortunately good will earned by customers is hard to measure.

I find this very appropriate to modern times and employment. 'Tis A more modern update to William Gaddis's themes in J.R.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#209

Post by rifung »

StavrosK wrote: post #164
stickfigure wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, although perhaps they named the switch poorly. My guess is that the product manager is trying to provide a single simple "privacy fiend" setting. You apparently want fine-grained privacy controls ("save my personal locations, but not my search history"). It's reasonable to want that, but it seems awfully entitled (not you, but many others on this thread) to demand it. Especially si…

This is disingenuous and unreasonable. The setting is unnecessarily restrictive. It's simple: "Do you want us to store your data on our servers?" Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. This is nowhere near a product problem. The setti…

> Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally.

This is nowhere near a product problem. The setting is per-account, so it's not like it'd be disabled on one device and enabled on another, so they'd get some weird UX, they just like crippling their app to force you to give them data.

I work for Google, opinions are my own. I could go on and on about this so apologies for the long post.

Obviously I am biased, but I think you're being a little too cynical.

People's habits largely depend on the incentives given to them. There is no incentive for the Maps team to take in more data, if anything there are incentives to have less data because they'd have to go through less security and privacy reviews.

What they DO have an incentive to do is to get more users, since that largely determines how much funding your team gets. Having users share location data, admittedly at the expense of privacy, provides a superior experience.

Each team has limited funding/headcount, so obviously they would use their resources as much as possible to try and get more users. Supporting the use case you described, which is not used by the vast majority of users does not align with the incentives given to them.

Recently, Google updated its values (I can't find it externally but I hope you'll believe me). One of these values is "Respect the User". I personally think that your use case would fall under this umbrella. Ignoring whether the specific feature is the best use of engineering time even for this value, the reality is that values mean nothing without incentives.

And there aren't incentives. You don't get a great performance rating for following the values, you get one for impacting some large percentage of users or improving the performance or conversion rates.

Even if you had a team of monks, completely driven by their morals and not career-driven whatsoever, this would not be sufficient because if they didn't hit performance goals then the team would just get defunded, unless the person above them was also the same, and the person above them, and so on.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#210

Post by reaperducer »

kache_ wrote: post #6

They constantly berate you to deactivate no tracking preferences on google maps. When you're aware of this fact you start seeing it everywhere, not just on google. For example, on Pinterest they will berate you to sign up using highlighted buttons on land, and the x button is out of the way on the top right corner. This end result is due to product managers/devs looking at conversion rates and optimizing for whatever…

This end result is due to product managers/devs looking at conversion rates and optimizing for whatever their metric of success is

Just wait until the product managers and devs are taken out of the loop and A/B testing becomes automated A/B...X/Y/Z testing through AI. Web interfaces will start to look like those crazy AI-generated YouTube videos. Anything to feed the shareholders.

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