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

businessinsider.com

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

#291

Post by urthor »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #74

Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwi…

Knowing location data is not incremental, it's a crucial addition in order to cross sell other services.

The future of Google maps is actually as a recommendation engine. They are adding icons now that are suggested by Google, and advertising that way.

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

#292

Post by milesvp »

worik wrote: post #284
dcow wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So everything that has sugar in it but doesn't explicitly spell it out in the name must be renamed to include a reference to sugar in the name? Frosted flakes -> sugar frosted flakes, rice crispy bars aren't just rice + crispy, they're rice + sugar + crispy. Orange juice -> orange juice and added sugar. I mean come on it doesn't work. All that said, the term vitamin is also entirely subjective. Nothing about "vitamin…

Frosted flakes -> sugar frosted flakes rice + sugar + crispy. orange juice and added sugar. I mean come on it works well.

Although orange juice is literally sugar water. I find it maddening that marketing has convinced us juice is healthy.

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

#293

Post by urthor »

ForHackernews wrote: post #192
Spooky23 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GCP is very different than the consumer services.

So they claim. Anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise: https://www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/gbh7p6/gcp_sus... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26252533

No... Google actually has started hiring AWS style support engineers for GCP.

Google has realized that building up business to business support networks is a profitable approach.

Customers get nothing, because customers don't pay money. Customers are the product.

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

#294

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #74

Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwi…

> From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best

but at their present scale this small improvement would mean a lot of money, wouldn't it? Lots of businesses find that it is harder to get significant gains (i think they call that the 'law of diminishing returns'), however the stock market is demanding steady growth figures.

i guess location data is important for targeting of local services: you can't push an add for a specific restaurant to a person living in a different city; now if you know that he may be going to that city, then that's a slightly different thing.

I think the alternative to all this tracking would be to push more yellow page directories like DMOZ or jasmine directories, but I don't know if you could do that in practice. Another direction would be to push a directory of specialized search engines, like duckduckgo bang! operators (shameless plug: here is my directory of these https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html )

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

#295

Post by specialist »

dcow wrote: post #276
boibombeiro wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fantasy name like most soft drinks

Fantasy names are a psychologically manipulative marketing tactic deployed to cause you to associate the thing you are consuming with something unrelated to the thing you are consuming so as to divert your attention from the thing you are consuming to some other (presumably more exciting) topic thereby increasing likelihood that you consume the product. Or they're a brand identity entirely divorced from the actual na…

> Fantasy names are a psychologically manipulative marketing tactic...

"Sprite" is psychologically manipulative but "VitaminWater" isn't?

OMG, pick a side.

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

#296

Post by throwaway15593 »

kyralis wrote: post #38
jeffbee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK "siphoned" is an opinion. Apple Maps also provides location services to other Apple products on its platform. Unless I disable the switch which is buried at Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services, Significant Locations, Apple will "allow your iCloud connected devices to learn places significant to you in order to provide useful location-related information in Maps, Calendar, Photos, and more." If I…

That data isn't actually shared with Apple. It's used on device by the client applications for those services.

Unless it isn't.

From Apple's site: "By enabling Location Services for your devices, you agree and consent to the transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of your location data and location search queries by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based and road traffic-based products and services."

You might want to look up the meaning of the words partners and licensees.

"Location-Based Suggestions: The location of your iPhone will be sent to Apple to provide more relevant recommendations. If you turn off Location Services for location-based suggestions, your precise location will not be sent to Apple."

So...not sending your precise location. But sending something not precise. To Apple.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056

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

#297

Post by specialist »

dcow wrote: post #275
whyenot wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flavored sugar water with vitamins 32.5g of sugar per bottle, most of which is fructose.

So everything that has sugar in it but doesn't explicitly spell it out in the name must be renamed to include a reference to sugar in the name? Frosted flakes -> sugar frosted flakes, rice crispy bars aren't just rice + crispy, they're rice + sugar + crispy. Orange juice -> orange juice and added sugar. I mean come on it doesn't work. All that said, the term vitamin is also entirely subjective. Nothing about "vitamin…

> I mean come on it doesn't work.

You're right. We shouldn't allow marketing candy as food.

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

#298

Post by strken »

milesvp wrote: post #292
worik wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frosted flakes -> sugar frosted flakes rice + sugar + crispy. orange juice and added sugar. I mean come on it works well.

Although orange juice is literally sugar water. I find it maddening that marketing has convinced us juice is healthy.

Having a small (200ml or so) glass of orange juice once a day is going to net you most of your daily vitamin C requirement and a third of your recommended daily sugar intake. Whether it's healthy really depends on what the rest of your diet looks like: if you mostly live on sugary cereal, pizza, and chicken nuggets, OJ means you've got something vaguely fruit-like in your diet. If it's possible to substitute it for actual fruit, actual fruit is better, but the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Sometimes I worry that "X is unhealthy!" can make people eat an even worse diet.

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

#299

Post by specialist »

distances wrote: post #217
dheera wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big companies have "fiduciary duty" to do the thing that gets them the most money within legal bounds, and not the ethically right thing. As in, they have a duty to breach ethics for profit as long as it's legal. Stupid concept which I wish we could abolish but that's the way the economy is currently setup.

As the others have already said, you're completely incorrect here. No such duty, it's an urban myth through and through.

A myth that morphed into a cult.
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