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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

#321

Post by gorbypark »

howzitallworkeh wrote: post #118
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blocking works perfectly fine, wdym?

I mean that 1Blocker is terrible compared to uBlock+NoScript, and that's the best content blocker I could find after spending days researching them. Plus, it costs $3/mo or $40 for something that barely functions. Web browsing in iOS is incredibly frustrating and privacy-unfriendly compared to Android. I recently bought an iPhone for the app tracking protection, but the difference between Safari and Firefox is like n…

Not sure how it compares to others, but a free option is to install Firefox Focus and enable its content blocking in regular Safari. I’m assuming since all browsers are using the same engine underneath that Firefox just installs a standard iOS content blocker and enables it for itself, but works for all browsers on iOS.

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

#322

Post by nojito »

londons_explore wrote: post #218
nojito wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Location targeting isn’t effective. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.118... Google are fighting tooth and nail to protect the illusion that their ads work.

Location data is very important for search. Try turning on a VPN from another country, opening an incognito window and doing a google search for 'pizza'. See how the results are nearly useless...? A bunch of delivery services that don't deliver in your country, who want payment in a currency you don't have, and all written in a language you don't speak. Location at the local level matters less, but even so it makes s…

I’m linking to an actual study on location targeting effectiveness.

Why are your anecdotes relevant?

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

#323

Post by dooglius »

notdang wrote: post #166
rantwasp wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so an android phone without the store? intriguing. at that point you might as well switch to a dumbphone. are dumb phones still a thing?

There are plenty of other stores to chose from. The problem here is that there are some apps that don't work without Google services, and those are the apps that you need the most: banking apps, payment apps, Uber, etc.

I use Uber with this setup just fine.

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

#324

Post by londons_explore »

codyb wrote: post #227
londons_explore wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Location data is very important for search. Try turning on a VPN from another country, opening an incognito window and doing a google search for 'pizza'. See how the results are nearly useless...? A bunch of delivery services that don't deliver in your country, who want payment in a currency you don't have, and all written in a language you don't speak. Location at the local level matters less, but even so it makes s…

Couldn’t just search for “pizza in Brooklyn” then? It’s not that onerous.

Brooklyn, Jamaica, got it.

Even if you write Brooklyn USA, there are 22 places called Brooklyn in the USA.

So now your search term is "Pizza in Brooklyn, NY, USA".

And now you want to search for the cost of a taxi... "Taxi prices in Brooklyn, NY, USA".

And now you want to know who won the baseball... "Who won the baseball, in USA". (Baseball means other things in other countries)

It's a staggering number of queries where the location changes the interpretation of what you're looking for, which changes the results.

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

#325

Post by goodpoint »

user-the-name wrote: post #196
underscore_ku wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

get a pinephone if you value freedom and privacy. apple ios is just as bad as android or microsoft windows

The pinephone is good for privacy only because it is unpopular. It offers far, far worse security against snooping by third-party apps than iOS does.

This is provably false on every level. Android and iOS deliver plenty of telemetries to Google and Apple. Apps do plenty of surveillance as well.

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

#326

Post by Terretta »

howzitallworkeh wrote: post #95
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.

Unfortunately, you will find iOS bad in different ways. For example: you cannot install NoScript, or anything like it, on an iOS browser. You must choose between "all JS on" or "all JS off", and third-party browsers like Firefox are crippled because Apple forces all iOS browsers to use their WebKit engine under the hood. The myriad of Safari "content blocker" apps are also pretty dismal, and often expensive. So ad-bl…

> or anything like it

You can turn JS off, which is quite similar to allowing no scripts, but more pragmatically, 1Blocker is remarkable, give it a look as one part of a phone-wide strategy. [Note: from sibling comments, you hate 1Blocker. Even so.]

Consider the iOS management profile from NextDNS along with a good set of their filter options (minimally NextDNS + AdGuard), enabling 1Blocker and learning how to tailor it, and turning on Apple’s native anti-tracking — then with all three in place enjoy browsing the web with relatively less footprint.

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

#327

Post by convolvatron »

neolog wrote: post #318
dcow wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My side is that it’s absurd to hold Coke responsible for not choosing a name that might be misleading to somebody . And that I find the VitaminWater trial absurd. My point about fantasy names is exactly that they’re not any different from VitaminWater so what gives? It’s rhetorical. Marketing is all manipulative tactics born out of a desire to push more product not help people be healthy. Assuming Coke is somehow res…

Do you know other people who agree with your last sentence? I'm curious how widespread this view is.

it has to be nonzero.

we've bought into this notion that capitalism serves us because we choose what to buy.

if thats not really true - what game are we playing here?

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

#328

Post by Spooky23 »

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

I’m working on a piece of a project that’s on GCP and ran into an edge case issue. For at least this product, the engineer reminded me of the old school Sun and IBM support people. It was a breath of fresh air for me. I’ve heard AWS is similar but never experienced it firsthand. Other big tech companies are very different.

A few weeks ago, I submitted an incident with sample code and got a response back with code to implement a workaround, and the information related to the enhancement the engineer submitted so I could escalate if needed. They automatically transitioned support engineers in another geography at shift end without any drama or repetition from me. All within 12 hours.

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

#329

Post by CamTin »

danlugo92 wrote: post #205
JamesDeepDown wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googles forced country localization is IMBECILICLY STUPID. I am currently in a foreign country. My English OS laptop with English browser has been logging in to gmail in English for years, and I ask Google search to show results in English for 5 years and EVERY TIME it tries to show the local language. Going to google.com is IGNORED, why?? Google engineers are paid $$$$$$$$ of dollars to implement THE MOST STUPID COD…

Funny, I've been using google since forever in an spanish speaker country and it always correctly (when logged in) shows me results in english (I have it set it to english).

I think the frustration is mainly that you have to be logged in and set some Google-specific setting in their application. A well-behaved HTTP server should simply honor the value of the Accept-Language request header regardless of what IP address a request is coming from.

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

#330

Post by dcow »

neolog wrote: post #318
dcow wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My side is that it’s absurd to hold Coke responsible for not choosing a name that might be misleading to somebody . And that I find the VitaminWater trial absurd. My point about fantasy names is exactly that they’re not any different from VitaminWater so what gives? It’s rhetorical. Marketing is all manipulative tactics born out of a desire to push more product not help people be healthy. Assuming Coke is somehow res…

Do you know other people who agree with your last sentence? I'm curious how widespread this view is.

I knew parents who didn’t let their children consume media with commercials. The internet has certainly made that more difficult and I don’t know how it turned out for them.
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