Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 452 posts

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

#331

Post by CWuestefeld »

enriquto wrote: post #294
tazjin wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I live in Russia and I trust this government more than e.g. the American one. It's always a matter of perspective.

I don't get this point of view. If you live in Russia, of all places, you'd likely want to avoid Yandex. On the other hand, for people from non-Russian countries Yandex is probably a better and safer choice than Google.

I made this same point awhile back to some colleagues, about my AmazFit smart watch. They were aghast that I'd have a Chinese product like that, given the possibility/likelihood of Chinese surveillance.

But, although China could monitor me, why would they care about some random guy out of 300 million Americans? And even if they cared, what could they do that might actually affect my life?

In contrast, we know that many US companies have an open wire to American law enforcement and surveillance agencies. And these people do have an interest in monitoring me (even if I'm not doing anything wrong), and they do have the power to harm me.

China might be eviller in many respects, but the products of a Chinese company are harmless to me, especially in comparison to domestic ones.

(And I also use Kaspersky for security on my home computers.)

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

#332

Post by eirikurh »

gobip wrote: post #213
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…

What do you use in replacement for GMail?

purelymail (https://purelymail.com/) is great! Can't recommend it enough.

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

#333

Post by [deleted] »

jcranberry wrote: post #323
titzer wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you, unreservedly, and without any personal malice, to fight the reality distortion field that causes people to make decisions like the above. Users do not want this. Engineers, PMs, and executives want this. Google's 23% YoY revenue growth wants this. To Google, users who don't subject to dystopian tracking, who don't consent to Google knowing everything about them, who just want to go about their own li…

If there's one feature that I would assert almost everyone wants which requires tracking some data, its search history recommendation.

[deleted]

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

#334

Post by ncallaway »

jcranberry wrote: post #327
gruturo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are just asking to have it off if they currently have the related setting off.

They answer it fairly clearly It is off if the related setting is currently off if you're a non paid user. However if you're a paid user it is currently on.

That just describes WHAT the behavior is more precisely.

That’s not an answer as to WHY the behavior is that way.

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

#335

Post by grahamm »

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…

PM person, any chance of having a word with those who decided to charge the free gsuite plan users? I think I gave you over 10 years of free testing. I know I've had it good for for many years but I run my family email on it and it is now going to cost me lots or be an ass ache moving to an alternative.

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

#336

Post by dustymcp »

vntx wrote: post #265
Lewton wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Ive tried this but Ddg just doesnt work outside of english language..

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

#337

Post by oceanplexian »

janoc wrote: post #288
tazjin wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently moved to Yandex 360. We previously had DNS, mail etc. on Google until an outage[0] occured. The outage was the classical story of "billing error in related Play Store (!) account nuked entire GCP setup", which diminished trust enough that I decided to move everything away from Google. I'm a Xoogler, but even then getting through to the right support channels is hard . Yandex services are pretty nice (they…

Uhm, sorry but Yandex of all things? Given that this is a Russian company with Kremlin having a "golden veto" power in? No, thanks. Google may be evil but moving my data from Google to the Russian government spooks is really not a solution.

I worked for LiveJournal, which was owned by a Russian company and what our platform removed for “misinformation” was a nothing compared to what companies like Twitter do today. I know Navalny (A Russian dissident) account is still active whereas platforms like Facebook and Twitter have banned multiple elected US politicians. If you want to avoid censorship the Russian platforms are great places to go.

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

#338

Post by ori_b »

tazjin wrote: post #325
enriquto wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this point of view. If you live in Russia, of all places, you'd likely want to avoid Yandex. On the other hand, for people from non-Russian countries Yandex is probably a better and safer choice than Google.

I don't really understand your point.

The bureaucrats and agents don't cooperate. Your surveillance data ends up locked on the drives of agencies with no power to affect your life.

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

#339

Post by cma »

eganist wrote: post #279
basisword wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reason for splitting this into two separate settings is understandable. >> ...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 tracked for all Google services. This is unacceptable. People have already opted out or been opted out by their admin. If they want to opt back in now that the setting is more granular,…

> Let's be honest, the real reason for making this opt-out again is that you hope lots of people won't notice and you can start collecting their data. Please reconsider. I'm keen on seeing if there's any legal code or case law that addresses opting someone back in who's already opted out. And I'm hoping there's personal culpability for the change, too. Not just corporate fines. But this is probably just wishful think…

Verizon is now doing this. If you opt out, they add new categories of tracking and then opt you back in:

> Custom Experience is a rebrand/spinoff of Verizon Selects, which customers were automatically enrolled into when they used the Verizon Up rewards program. Verizon Selects is being rebranded Custom Experience Plus (and anyone who was previously a member of Verizon Selects automatically gets moved to the new Plus program) and the standard Custom Experience program is being branched off of it, which allows the company to track many of its customers’ data use who do not actively opt-out.

Google's move feels similar. At least do a prompt of the user if you think they would want to opt in. Don't just opt them in automatically on your own.

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

#340

Post by Nbox9 »

jcranberry wrote: post #323
titzer wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you, unreservedly, and without any personal malice, to fight the reality distortion field that causes people to make decisions like the above. Users do not want this. Engineers, PMs, and executives want this. Google's 23% YoY revenue growth wants this. To Google, users who don't subject to dystopian tracking, who don't consent to Google knowing everything about them, who just want to go about their own li…

If there's one feature that I would assert almost everyone wants which requires tracking some data, its search history recommendation.

Why would I want Google to store my search history? I can look at my search history just fine with my local copy on my web browser.

(Web browsers store previously visited websites)

Post reply on HN