Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private • Hacker News Board

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#61

Post by croes » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

JCM9 wrote: post #13

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…

The best part is, that it's not proven that all this tailored ads really have the desired effect. Especially if many buy those ads. Most of them are useless because the targeted customer only choose one to buy from for a wanted product, if he is choice is based on ads at all.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#62

Post by tolbish » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #54

arkades wrote: post #31

Earlier this week there was a post regarding Google and its utilization of private health information. A number of Googlers came forward to describe how very seriously Google takes user privacy and keeping inappropriate data from being shared across silos. I got the overall impression of Googlers taking the position of “you guys don’t know how seriously we take peoples privacy.” If any of those Googlers would please…

Health care data is the only thing with regulations in the US. Everything else is fair game. That is how Google rakes in the billions. They aren't going to leave money on the table to satisfy an ethical code.

I wonder how much evil they could actually be getting away with if they wanted to. Imagine all of the trade secrets and national security secrets they could easily obtain by analyzing who is Googling what from where, or who is accessing their services from where.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#63

Post by readams » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

Vespasian wrote: post #39

JCM9 wrote: post #13

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…

Google even managed to incur heavy losses from offering cloud infrastructure services. A business which usually is a guaranteed golden goose. They are really bad at making money with anything that isn't advertising.

Google cloud has huge year over year growth, and does really well especially in retail sectors. The losses are an investment.

Also, not sure where you get that is a guaranteed golden goose. Most companies that are in this space don't do well.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#64

Post by croes » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #41

JCM9 wrote: post #13

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…

> Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share I see no evidence that regular people are particularly unhappy with sharing their information. While it's true that on the internet there's a loud privacy activist movement that's grown over the past few years, I don't think this movement reflects the true preferences of the silent…

Because most users do not know what consequences their data can have. The whole business is completely opaque. A few years ago, it turned out that Apple users were shown higher prices in online shops just because they had used an Apple browser. I doubt they were happy about it, but as long as they didn't know, they had seen no problem in sharing this information.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#65

Post by _trampeltier » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

At the same time, Google think allways I'm in germany on work, because our company has just one large internet connection for all company users from the whole world. And google does not even let me change the country.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#66

Post by est31 » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

max_hammer wrote: post #9

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. Few years back you could easily root your android device and get custom ROM installed. Now, only solution is use a feature phone without gps and wifi and have a separate device for connecting to internet. IPhone is also a good alternative but I don't agree with thier walled garden development philosophy. Edit: You pay a separate fee…

You are still able to root android phones and install custom ROMs. Note that even then though, even if you don't have any gapps installed, it sends your approximate location to google by querying its AGPS services.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#67

Post by cookiengineer » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

JCM9 wrote: post #13

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…

I think in the future in order to stay private online, there's no way unless web traffic is decentralized off their servers.

That is the real power behind a peer-to-peer system in my opinion: Offloading, and therefore removing the capabilities to track anything as a single node in the system.

The only issue is peer-to-peer transport encryption, which can be solved if done correctly.

Something like "statistically correct" DNS, or assets, or contents should've been the norm a long time ago. That's exactly what I'm striving for with my Tholian Stealth Browser [1]

(to clarify: I mean peer-to-peer as a networking concept, specifically as the opposite concept of a decentralized blockchain)

[1] https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#68

Post by dv_dt » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #50

JCM9 wrote: post #13

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…

as an American skilled in computer science, I am literally aghast at what the mobile phone has done in barely fifteen years, degrading decades and in fact centuries of individual rights mores. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, in East Asia, there was a completely different series of social evolutions, such that a large majority of people are not bothered and in fact expect services tied to identity tied to finance. Th…

In a way it seems pragmatic. You say all the boundaries are being violated, you might as well get something out of it. Also I’m not sure there’s a lot of difference in loss of privacy and tapping or swiping a credit card.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#69

Post by petters » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

JCM9 wrote: post #13

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…

Google would be able to get a ton of revenue without tracking users at all. Selling ads based on search keywords would still work very well

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#70

Post by eingaeKaiy8ujie » Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

sunstone wrote: post #3

I've had a string of Google phones going back to the Nexus 5x but, for the very reasons laid out in this article, my next phone will likely be from Apple. That will be my first Apple product.

Apple may protect you from Google and Facebook but it won't protect you from itself. iOS is completely closed and you can't verify if it respects your privacy. Don't trust Apple. Open source software is a fundamental requirement for privacy. GrapheneOS is one of the best alternatives.