As others have noticed, this is not a new move. For the past several years I've been accessing Google Maps simply by typing in maps.google.com and it has always redirected me to google.com/maps.
maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
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Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#62> Congratulations, you now have permission to geo-track me across all of your services.
I don't think Google needed to do this move to track you across their services. Pretty sure they were able to do that before.
Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#63I am having a hard time figuring out how this would be affected by GDPR.
Does the GDPR care about the concept of apps and URLs? If not, all it matters is the person/company relationship.
Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#64Recently safari (on macos 10.15) started auto completing „maps.“ to „maps.apple.com“, although I only tried Apple maps once and always use gmaps. Maybe google noticed this and tries to circumvent safari‘s „preference“ for Apple Maps
Isn't maps.apple.com in your bookmarks? Most browsers suggest from bookmarks before anything else. Maybe it got added there in an update to. you know, improve your experience with the Apple ecosystem.
Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you load, let's say maps.google.com/somepage in a hidden iframe and use postmessage to send location data if it already has access? Or do browsers force top level navigation for such permissions?
There were probably covert ways to obtain the same information but it's now easier for Google to grab the information using regular APIs. It also means if app X and app Y on their own subdomains were previously using location APIs without any tricks, you are now effectively opting into both apps. Bottom line: technically it doesn't matter but it probably makes a difference in practice.
Yeah it makes a lot of sense to do it this way, however it does not feel that nefarious when there were plausable workarounds anyway.
Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#66Most people don't check their accounting settings, to see the massive amounts of data that Google is collecting on them or the amount of tracking they are doing. Even if a person adjusts the settings, its not really known to what extent the continual collection is actually mitigated or privacy is being ensured. To include users data being sent to 3rd parties or governments at Google's prerogative or their employees, or to the extent results and services are manipulated for Google's own internal purposes and benefit.
Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
How? Access to location will stick regardless if you use containers or not.
If you put all G-services in their own container, google.com/mail can't access google.com/maps cookies, so, will it also not track location. Not sure actually, they indeed probably store your "consent" on their server. Could you block location services per container perhaps? Hmm this is a smart move indeed, all of a sudden I'm logged into G-maps whereas I wasn't before... FireFox helpfully opened google.com/maps in m…
> google.com/mail can't access google.com/maps cookies, so, will it also not track location
google.com has now direct access to your location, it doesn't need any cookies.
Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#68https://www.openstreetmap.org
If you need OSM on Android, I can recommend: - "Organic Maps" (a fork of the old MapsMe codebase) if you want a clean, simple user experience - "OSMAnd" if you want a very powerful, highly customizable map application, which comes at the cost of a steeper learning curve Both apps are open source and support navigation, offline maps and POI search. The things I miss most compared to Google Maps is live traffic informa…
I'm a OSMand user and OSM contributor. However, sometimes I hate the routing OSMand provides, taking me through narrow streets with awkward turns. Wish they used GraphHopper...
A nice feature in OSMand is that even if you get the free version off the Play store, if you log in with OSM and are active, you get free map updates and all the "plus" functions. And on top of that, the full plus version is available off F-Droid.
By the way, OSMand has some support for reporting traffic issues (police, crashes), but it's very very limited due to low adoption way below a critical mass. Also, reporting traffic status would probably require OSMand to run a pretty beefy server and get the current speed/traffic info from all the users - many chose it exactly because they don't want that.
Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were probably covert ways to obtain the same information but it's now easier for Google to grab the information using regular APIs. It also means if app X and app Y on their own subdomains were previously using location APIs without any tricks, you are now effectively opting into both apps. Bottom line: technically it doesn't matter but it probably makes a difference in practice.
Yeah it makes a lot of sense to do it this way, however it does not feel that nefarious when there were plausable workarounds anyway.
Browser could implement finer grain permissions (i.e. only permit the API use for a given top level path regexp) but I bet most users won't bother fine tuning their grants.