211–220 of 249 posts
Why is stuff like saving browsing history, doing voice search or autofilling credit cards suddenly a bad thing? Chrome lets you turn all of that off in a single click if you want. I have personally found most of the features on that list to greatly enhance my web experience.
For me, the Google search is sometimes magical. Way better than any other.
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I agree "harmless" is absolutely the wrong word. I also think that data that might be harmful to a user because it could record them breaking a law should be thought of differently than data that could be harmful when used maliciously by a third party. Even allowing for the often oppressive and unfair application of the law, data that is harmful to the user when sent to the authorities should be considered differentl…
Seems like you are arguing that it’s ok for Google to use the data they collect to actively report people for suspected crimes.
[1] Personally I feel like providers should be legally barred from doing anything other than responding to warrants for information related to a real person and they should, in that case, be prevented from including any information linked through statistical imputation.
I guess the majority of people on HN already know this more or less. The problem is still this: We still don't have good alternatives to Google's products and services. 1) Android: Google still owns all our phones. Even on rooted phones it hard to remove google services that god know send so many requests containing whatnot to the eeee addresses. Just install no-root firewall and you will be amazed the amount of pend…
Email is generically really great in this regard. Very little lockin.
I guess the majority of people on HN already know this more or less. The problem is still this: We still don't have good alternatives to Google's products and services. 1) Android: Google still owns all our phones. Even on rooted phones it hard to remove google services that god know send so many requests containing whatnot to the eeee addresses. Just install no-root firewall and you will be amazed the amount of pend…
Android: iPhone. I don't know if I trust Apple more than Google, but at least on the surface level our interests align better. Might try a Librem 5 or Google-less Android in the future.
Google search: DDG. Agreed with your points there, sometimes it's tempting to go back to Google.
Gmail: Hey.com commercial account, plus a custom domain and individual aliases for each service I give my email address to. That helps with portability somewhat, in the future at least.
Maps: Apple Maps has been pretty nice. Might give OpenStreetMap a try.
YouTube: Invidious.
Android Auto: Apple Car Play. I wish there were a better option that didn't depend on Apple.
Google Drive: OneDrive, but I'm looking for alternatives.
I guess the majority of people on HN already know this more or less. The problem is still this: We still don't have good alternatives to Google's products and services. 1) Android: Google still owns all our phones. Even on rooted phones it hard to remove google services that god know send so many requests containing whatnot to the eeee addresses. Just install no-root firewall and you will be amazed the amount of pend…
Google Maps has the wrong street names near me, so I looked for something from OpenStreetMap. But there's nothing that works with Android Auto. In fact, there are only two Android Auto navigation apps, Google Maps and Waze. Both owned by Google, and Waze seems happy to send me through the most confusing intersections if it thinks it will save 5 seconds of driving time.
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What is the reaon?
What's the business model again? How are they making money? "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold"
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When Google Ads is linked to Google Analytics, the links append the 'gclid' query parameter to the URL they point to. This value is how a downstream conversion, collected by Analytics, is associated with the upstream ad click from Google Ads. The 'gclid' parameter is unique to the ad impression, i.e. it's a join key to both the term that was searched, and the user who searched for it.
gclid is appended to ad clicks, but not organic search: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9744275 (Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)
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The linked image says "coarse location" for Chrome/Analytics. So this is not your GPS data but most likely IP based city/metro. Also it says "may" everywhere. AFAIK DDG may be doing all of those things too. From a technical POV this looks such a huge FUD that it's sad.
> AFAIK DDG may be doing all of those things too. Except that DDG explicitly says they are not: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
I guess the majority of people on HN already know this more or less. The problem is still this: We still don't have good alternatives to Google's products and services. 1) Android: Google still owns all our phones. Even on rooted phones it hard to remove google services that god know send so many requests containing whatnot to the eeee addresses. Just install no-root firewall and you will be amazed the amount of pend…
Google Maps has the wrong street names near me, so I looked for something from OpenStreetMap. But there's nothing that works with Android Auto. In fact, there are only two Android Auto navigation apps, Google Maps and Waze. Both owned by Google, and Waze seems happy to send me through the most confusing intersections if it thinks it will save 5 seconds of driving time.
[1]: https://osmand.net/
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/OsmAnd/comments/l17r3l/any_updates_...
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Because Chrome syncs to my Google account so the large collection of devices I browse on have shared history, defaults, and bookmarks.
Firefox does that https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/sync/