Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to agree. Companies don't seem to switch to being good once they go evil. I would love it if someone could share a counterexample. I want it to be true that companies don't just turn evil but can become better too.
How about Microsoft?
Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
61–70 of 452 posts
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#62Dear Google: you are becoming less likable by the second. For a long time you were the champion of user experience and you forced a lot of sleazy products to change or go out of business. Recently, it's like you've systematically discovered every dark pattern your evangelists once scorned. Please, please flip the don't be evil bit back to on. Evil Google is not very likable.
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#63Dear Google: you are becoming less likable by the second. For a long time you were the champion of user experience and you forced a lot of sleazy products to change or go out of business. Recently, it's like you've systematically discovered every dark pattern your evangelists once scorned. Please, please flip the don't be evil bit back to on. Evil Google is not very likable.
When has Google ever been the champion of user experience? Their core product is barely usable without an adblocker.
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#64Dear Google: you are becoming less likable by the second. For a long time you were the champion of user experience and you forced a lot of sleazy products to change or go out of business. Recently, it's like you've systematically discovered every dark pattern your evangelists once scorned. Please, please flip the don't be evil bit back to on. Evil Google is not very likable.
When has Google ever been the champion of user experience? Their core product is barely usable without an adblocker.
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. I've been living outside the US since 2014 and just noticed it recently as I was back using driving directions. Seems to be at least once a trip, once an hour. Only ever uses large chain restaurants / banks as landmarks. Doesn't happen at all in Japan (yet).
Jesus wept, that's asinine. Edit: Oughta start taking bets on how long until this makes its way into Waze, and then how long until Google prevents us from turning Waze's voice nav off.
We're getting closer and closer every day.
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#66Use LineageOS+microG and (at the very least) Aurora Store on your phone. Use Firefox containers to sequester all Google services away from your other activity. Of course, use uBlock Origin. Achieve near total peace of mind when faced with things like this. Soon, I want to unsubscribe from all YouTube channels and move them over to RSS. I'll use a third-party YouTube client to watch videos queued from my feeds. Then,…
> all YouTube channels and move them over to RSS I did this recently and it's wonderful. RSS-Bridge, locally hosted feeding into my locally hosted FreshRSS. If you use a plugin like privacy redirect, you don't need to remember to use an alternate front end
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. I've been living outside the US since 2014 and just noticed it recently as I was back using driving directions. Seems to be at least once a trip, once an hour. Only ever uses large chain restaurants / banks as landmarks. Doesn't happen at all in Japan (yet).
Jesus wept, that's asinine. Edit: Oughta start taking bets on how long until this makes its way into Waze, and then how long until Google prevents us from turning Waze's voice nav off.
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're near or past peak growth. Juicing the profits means they have to extract value by reducing costs and monetizing as much as possible. Steady dependable revenue with good customer service isn't good enough for American businesses any more.
They didn't build a significantly commercially successful product since gmail. Android was an acquisition. They are in panic mode since they realize growth will be over. Search has stagnated, they missed on social (repeatedly) and they have nowhere to improve. Ventures like the self driving car etc. were all an expensive detour. Google is the new Microsoft (or worse, Oracle). It's just a matter of time until the rest…
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#69They are absolutely running with the motto "be evil". You think some checkbox in a "privacy settings" window is going to stop it?
Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
#70Search history can be immensely useful for our users, since a lot of them re-run prior searches or want search experiences built on top of prior ones. Today, for the Workspace paid offering admins who choose to disable the somewhat confusingly named Web and App Activity admin console control, users in the domain have no ability to get relevant and historical search suggestions in Drive or Gmail that can help them save time.