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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

#211

Post by pembrook »

Google is clearly an abusive monopoly and stifling innovation and privacy wherever possible.

HOWEVER, in this instance, I don’t really see the issue. Workspace customers will obviously want to search their document history, etc. and this info will be walled off from other sides of the business.

The melodramatic hysteria in the comments here is interesting though, and underlines just how far Google’s reputation has fallen in the tech community.

There is zero trust for Google here, and this lack of trust can even be a roadblock to making rational product decisions. People are rightly suspicious of power, because it always gets abused.

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

#213

Post by gobip »

evocatus wrote: post #207
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…

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?

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

#214

Post by drpixie »

danuker wrote: post #197
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'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) businesses google has details on, it's obvious that maps is filtering out non-advertisers.

So google is no longer a search engine, or a maps provider - it's degraded to be a small-time "yellow-pages" advertising directory. Sad really.

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

#215

Post by cik »

Ensorceled wrote: post #205
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'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'll have used since 2010. That's my level of upset.

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

#216

Post by Graffur »

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 need consent from the users - how did this pass compliance?

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

#217

Post by akie »

yreg wrote: post #162
akie wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can we trust what you say? Google is not necessarily a very trustworthy company anymore. Case in point, the subject at hand: people who said they did not want to be tracked, now have to find a setting and say it again. That does not inspire confidence in the company, and as a proxy, it doesn't give me much hope that I can trust what you say.

Well if you don't trust them then probably don't use them, since they could save your activity no matter the state of the tracking toggle in the UI.

I try to avoid them wherever possible. There are quite a few decent alternatives for many of their core services.

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

#218

Post by huqedato »

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 just a mean strategy to obfuscate your real intent (enabling your service) from the ignorant user.

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

#219

Post by 3np »

cik wrote: post #138
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…

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…

Same. This is the last straw that has led us to unanimously decide to transition all our clients paid accounts from G. Some stakeholders were already on the fence but this is what tipped the scales for everyone. Doing the same for my family (we have also been using a Workspace for our emails, photos, and calendars).

It's not OK.

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

#220

Post by Graffur »

datalist wrote: post #87
qbasic_forever wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail was a way, way, way better experience than Hotmail or anything else when it started (and even almost a decade later). Maps blew everyone's mind at launch too and instantly made an entire group of direction and mapping websites irrelevant. Google Earth was magical just spending hours trotting around the globe too. Reader (RIP) was by far the best RSS reader.

Maps and Earth were not in-house built but purchased.

Maps was amazing at first and then it got ruined bit by bit. But somewhere along the way it got awesome again. I think it's really good right now.
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