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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

#351

Post by seba_dos1 »

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…

I'm kinda amazed that you thought this reply will somehow help instead of making it worse. Google having no respect to user choices is hardly surprising, but putting it so directly into words by feature's PM managed to raise my eyebrows a bit.

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

#353

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

#354

Post by nerdjon »

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…

This is completely unacceptable and adds further fuel for me to remove the last few remnants I have of Google in my life.

Wanting to make more fine grained permissions is fine. But if you are going to do so you must respect the wishes of anyone who previously disabled them and set the new one to disabled if the previous one it was part of is.

Or better yet just disable it all by default, but we all know Google will never do this. Adding new permissions and automatically opting people into things they previously disabled is why data harvesting companies like Google have lost all trust.

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

#355

Post by some1else »

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…

You know the right thing to do is for Workspace to honour the user's choice for all services, and the European Commission does too. This could end with a huge fine for Google.

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

#356

Post by Aurelius3 »

Accacin wrote: post #208
Aurelius3 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the reason firefox containers can't be used in private browsing mode? I really want to use them but also want to clear all stored data after closing a window. So far I've just been using firefox nightly, firefox, and ungoogled chromium to give me a total of three maximum "containers"... Is there a better way to benefit from private browsing modes while allowing for more containers?

I use a Firefox addon called "Temporary Containers". Basically unless I tell it overwise, every tab I open (unless it's the same domain) is opened in a new container. When the tab is closed, the container is deleted. I use the automatic mode, but it's quite configurable in what you can do and works incredibly well. It's way better than private mode IMO.

This would be ideal, but from what I understand this addon is built on the framework of mozilla's containers, which can not work in private browsing, which is a shame, I'm not sure why mozilla has set it up this way, although they likely have a good reason.

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

#357

Post by IgorPartola »

tedivm wrote: post #302
eganist wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There really should be more personal culpability, at least on the exec team and board of directors, for things like this. I also hope Google gets sued in Europe over this. I live in the US and work for a European company and I'm reasonably sure they're going to be super pissed off about this.

Is it possible to sue executives and project managers involved in this decision directly in civil court? I imagine quite a few have juicy enough salaries that it would be nice to take a bite at them.

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

#358

Post by scarface74 »

Mezzie wrote: post #326
scarface74 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has Google ever been the champion of user experience? Their core product is barely usable without an adblocker.

Early Google set themselves apart with the user experience. For example, Google Search's homepage's simplicity was astonishing at the time; a direct inverse of the bloated pages most of their competitors at the time favored (Yahoo, Alta Vista, AOL, and Dogpile were pretty bad if I remember correctly, and Ask Jeeves was somewhere in the middle. The others I don't remember as well). GMail may have not been the best tec…

On the other hand, now search for “bicycles” on Google.

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

#359

Post by belter »

zht wrote: post #271
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…

I feel sort of bad for this comment. The reason is because the reason given is perfectly sound. “We have to split this out because of perfect reasonable reasons like laws, data retention policies, etc etc”. And everything afterwards is pure unadulterated propaganda. I don’t know if the commenter knows how patronizing they sound. “We did this for you because even though you’ve previously explicitly opted out, we think…

Google is pulling a "Soup Nazi" on you... "The Soup Nazi": https://youtu.be/euLQOQNVzgY

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

#360

Post by aagha »

amf12 wrote: post #45

Note: this seems to be about their paid "Workspaces" offering. I have a private paid domain email on Google Workspaces. I received their email and checked out their FAQs to see how it would affect me in terms of privacy. Workspaces data is inherently said to be private under contract and not used for advertising or other Google purposes. Here are relevant snippets from their new FAQ: - "Google never uses your data in…

> - The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed.

This is specifically being done purely for evil purposes though, right?

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