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Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

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Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#311

Post by pickleman »

hellbanner wrote: post #62
digitaLandscape wrote: post #26

There was a lot of uproar about this internally but nothing changed. They told us that this was the only "practical" option. The company has rotted.

Their UX continues to g et worse. Google Voice on iOS has had 10-20 second lag (no joke) on older versions of iOS (used to be jus fine!) for 1-2 years now. One previous version of GV in particular froze for 10 seconds on your first key press, now I can't rely on it to open properly, or send messages. It seems intentionally sabotaged. I heard employees quit when G merged the YT with "real name" accounts. Personally I'…

Turns out when you worship at the alter of "diversity" and promote people based on victimhood status over actual merit, your products suffer.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#312

Post by larkeith »

mikelward wrote: post #293
larkeith wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separate from the recommendation problems, which seem to vary by person, the site has gotten substantially worse for mobile players, to the point I've almost entirely stopped using it: - The mobile page does not allow quality selection, and always selects quality options far below what would be supported by your connection (It sometimes drops to 240p, and I have not seen it select anything above 480p, yet can easily…

Does it select low quality when you're on Wi-Fi, or on cellular?

That's a good point - I pretty much always use cellular, so I wonder if the quality cap for the mobile player is there as a misguided attempt to reduce data usage. Would make it more understandable, if no less irritating.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#313

Post by diminoten »

polkadotted wrote: post #221

I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…

I am constantly and genuinely confused about why people care just so damn much about other people's privacy.

What is it about privacy that bothers people so much more than the myriad of other violations that take place across the world, and what makes the fact that corporations are committing this sin so much worse than when individuals do it?

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#314

Post by reitanqild »

jhasse wrote: post #306
clubm8 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome. Reminds me of when Microsoft used to optimize it's products for Windows and other OSs were an afterthought...

That's still the case.

That might be but I'm using dotnet core and vscode on Linux now and except autocomplete being weaker than I'm used to in Java and config files being a mess, -both of which are true on Windows as well, I haven't found a single thing to complain about.

And while I have stopped trusting MS (again) after their recent browser failure it seems they are very much trying to sell software and services on all platforms.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#315

Post by tjoff »

drb91 wrote: post #298
lentil_soup wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a side note, but we should avoid saying things like "not sure why people are surprised" or similar, like in a few other comments. It is true that Google has done this several times over, but we shouldn't normalize it as nothing new, move on. We should still call it out each and every time we see it, even if we are repeating ourselves. Also, what might be obvious to our community is not to those outside, whic…

> We should still call it out each and every time we see it, even if we are repeating ourselves. Seems like the right response would be to stop using the problem products. If you think you can't afford to, I hope you like Google. This is in no way surprising.

Maybe not for the first offense. That's why we should repeat it.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#316

Post by reitanqild »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #210
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was discussed on HN a few days ago: the size of the company is inversely proportional to the quality of their support. After the company reaches a certain size, they can simply afford not to care. Also, in this case it makes more business sense for them. Therefore I prefer to deal with smaller companies.

You say this, but I've had some great experiences with Microsoft support over the years, both on the hardware and software side. I hear good things about Apple's support too.

Agree. I had to contact Microsoft about a store app.

The service felt nothing less than amazing. All for a US10 purchase on a single Windows 10 machine.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#317

Post by gaia »

I've switched to the Vivaldi browser after all these privacy undermining "features" Google has been rolling out.

But I am happy Android now allows setting your own DNS - you are no longer restricted to Google DNS. I am waiting for X-Privacy to be made available for Android 9.

Apple products are not an option for me. It's Linux, Windows and Android in my world.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#318

Post by [deleted] »

verytrivial wrote: post #186
maxwellito wrote: post #143

But the funny part is Google keep your saved addresses. It only block the access. If you have your home and/or work address set in Gmaps, and you disable all tracking in myactivity.google.com. The address will disappear and GMaps will invite you to reactive App and Web tracking. If you do it, your saved addresses will reappear. This is slightly dodgy.

> This is slightly dodgy. It is punitive. They are (and are within their rights to) withholding value because you aren't giving them what they want, which is mineable activity information. I notice that there are always cartoons of happy users getting additional useful features from their services when tracking is enbled, but never cute cartoons of the other actors extracting value based upon advertising etc. Truth I…

[deleted]

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#319

Post by reitanqild »

verytrivial wrote: post #186
maxwellito wrote: post #143

But the funny part is Google keep your saved addresses. It only block the access. If you have your home and/or work address set in Gmaps, and you disable all tracking in myactivity.google.com. The address will disappear and GMaps will invite you to reactive App and Web tracking. If you do it, your saved addresses will reappear. This is slightly dodgy.

> This is slightly dodgy. It is punitive. They are (and are within their rights to) withholding value because you aren't giving them what they want, which is mineable activity information. I notice that there are always cartoons of happy users getting additional useful features from their services when tracking is enbled, but never cute cartoons of the other actors extracting value based upon advertising etc. Truth I…

> They are (and are within their rights to) withholding value because you aren't giving them what they want, which is mineable activity information.

Seems like a clear violation of GDPR which specifies that collection of additional data except as required to provide the service must be voluntarily.

And no - ads/tracking doesn't count, and no - it is not voluntarily if they punish you for not accepting it.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#320

Post by dwighttk »

clubm8 wrote: post #297

I am a privacy conscious person, I've been using the Here We Go app on iOS for directions: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id... It has very cool feature - offline maps. By downloading your state/country's maps, you don't have to query a server for every little mapping request. Between this app and saved podcasts, I'm able to switch off my mobile large chunks of the day.

How do they make money? Their site seems to point to selling some kind of information to companies:

https://www.here.com/en/industries/media/advertising

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