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Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#261

Post by snowwrestler »

Groxx wrote: post #19
tesseract wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Turn after the Dunkin Donuts on the right onto Maple Street"

This has been in my app for a couple years - I hate it every time. Not only is it very clearly advertising, it's nearly always useless because the restaurant/whatever is barely or not at all visible on the approach to the turn. It's pretty clear they're going for paid landmarks, not useful ones (though I don't like landmark-directions either way).

Could someone please point me to the spot in Google’s ads product to purchase these ads-in-navigation-directions? If these are really ads, there will be a place to buy them. Google doesn’t run ads for free.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#262

Post by twofornone »

diamondage wrote: post #256
evocatus wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for confirming that Google is no longer run by the same people I trusted (at least, somewhat more than I do now) over a decade ago. I encourage everyone to make the leap to DDG or some other search engine that doesn't just treat you as a data cow to be milked for your precious, precious "insights." Even GMail is no longer an attractive proposition - the risk of being locked out (perhaps, even automatically!) o…

DDG leaks data like a sieve. When you type a query it's present in the URL. Use an engine like onesearch.com which obfuscate this. (or get DDG to add this basic feature!)

>When you type a query it's present in the URL

Why does that matter? Doesn't anything after the domain stay between your browser and the server you're communicating with, assuming https?

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#263

Post by somehnacct3757 »

charcircuit wrote: post #253
Fiahil wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're getting a lot of shit from everyone who have an axe to grind against Google. They're not necessarily wrong, but I also think your mistake is not only to sneakily re-enable a previous off setting set by users, but rather your definition of "immensely useful". Yes, we do re-run prior searches, but they're not "immensely useful" because you have no feedback if we found what we were looking for or not. Usi…

>sneakily re-enable a previous off setting set by users How is sending everyone an email about it being "sneaky"?

Because not everyone will read or understand the email.

Because they sent the email months before users can adjust the new setting to match their old setting, placing a burden to remember on the user.

Because they didn't default the new value to the existing value.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#264

Post by numbsafari »

robertlagrant wrote: post #179
nottorp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In summary, no one trusts your employer any more no matter what they say. > Search history can be immensely useful for our users See the various comments spread across all HN articles stating that Google Search has become useless.

Is that true for Google Workspace search?

Search for Drive has long been garbage.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#265

Post by vntx »

Lewton wrote: post #248
cik wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active, soon to be former user here. Constantly moving things around, to at the very least temporarily hoover data from users is wrong. The changes going on recently mean, that I'm finally eliminating my use of the G. I've dropped paid services. I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses. I've embraced other search engines again - and they're surprising…

I had my first DDG beats google moment yesterday I searched for ‘low more guitar sound’ and top result was an awesome YouTube video recreating the guitar sound of Low - More (song with amazing guitar tone) Went to my other computer that defaults to google, searched the same thing Pages of irrelevant crap, searched for ‘low more %nameofyoutubechanbel’ Nothing Searched for exact title of YouTube video Nothing Had to ma…

I've been using DDG for a few months for almost all my searches now. It gets me the results I want almost all the time. When I do switch to google when DDG isn't enough, google gives me SEO crap and I go back to DDG, rephrase and focus my search and get the results I want.

Why does google serve up so much irrelevant crap nowadays?

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#266

Post by vorejdajo »

diamondage wrote: post #256
evocatus wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for confirming that Google is no longer run by the same people I trusted (at least, somewhat more than I do now) over a decade ago. I encourage everyone to make the leap to DDG or some other search engine that doesn't just treat you as a data cow to be milked for your precious, precious "insights." Even GMail is no longer an attractive proposition - the risk of being locked out (perhaps, even automatically!) o…

DDG leaks data like a sieve. When you type a query it's present in the URL. Use an engine like onesearch.com which obfuscate this. (or get DDG to add this basic feature!)

You can change GET to POST in DDG settings > Privacy

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#267

Post by uberman »

drpixie wrote: post #214
danuker wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've embraced other search engines again - and they're surprisingly good enough, finally. Or perhaps Google is crap enough. I no longer find anything useful when the search term overlaps with something for sale. Even Wikipedia search is better in that case, and I skip directly to it.

Absolutely. Google search is now my choice ONLY when I want to buy something, and it's likely to be from someone who'd advertise through google. Otherwise you've got to go a long way through the results, and then you get to just junk - pretty useless. Google maps is just as bad - other than street names and a few "public" places, the only locations that show up seem to be those paying to appear. Given how many (most)…

I wish I could upvote this post multiple times. Google senior leadership should read this out loud at an all hands meeting.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#268

Post by throwitout22 »

riverguardian wrote: post #70

Hello hello, PM for the feature checking in here. amf12's reply is quite on-point. Web and App Activity is designed to store search activity across all Google services, and we're splitting Workspace data out since it's governed by strict data handling guarantees, with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits of better search in Workspace without having to opt-into search history being trac…

Respect the user.

Respect the opportunity.

Neither are being done here. An email explaining the setting is one thing. Enabling the setting for the users is blatant disrespect. You and your team of PMs are destroying Google's opportunities with our users by forcing changes like this and pushing them over the edge.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#269

Post by JaimeThompson »

riverguardian wrote: post #70

Hello hello, PM for the feature checking in here. amf12's reply is quite on-point. Web and App Activity is designed to store search activity across all Google services, and we're splitting Workspace data out since it's governed by strict data handling guarantees, with the hope that more people will feel comfortable getting the benefits of better search in Workspace without having to opt-into search history being trac…

Think you can get someone at Google to actually notify everyone about the upcoming GSuite changes as I, and some others, have yet to be notified of them.

It is hard to trust companies that want to start billing me, it seems, without telling me first.

Re: Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

#270

Post by pessimizer »

cik wrote: post #215
Ensorceled wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm dropping (paid) GSuite/Workspace/whatever it's now called for my family, and for a couple of businesses. What are you switching to? I'm in the same situation of a couple of family groups and a couple of small businesses on GSuite and looking for alternatives.

There are several options (including my domain host) that seem very attractive. Shockingly so is iCloud. My only iCloud issue (and I have ZERO Apple products) is that I can't find a way to mount the storage on Linux. If I could do that, it's what I'll choose. For the record, I don't think I trust Apple either - but nowadays they're clearly less evil than the big G. Heck, I'm thinking of trying out the first iPhone I'…

I have yet to buy an Apple product, but Android is making me consider it. The difference for me is that Apple seems to have little or no interest in people who are not Apple customers, whereas google has just become a generalized surveillance agency. Apple's values may be a little unpleasant, but at least they have some.
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