361–370 of 496 posts
Some paint it as if the main reason to switch was privacy ( https://www.imore.com/duckduckgo-switches-apple-maps-because... "DuckDuckGo switches to Apple Maps, because privacy"), but the previous map provider was mapbox (openstreetmap plus commercial sources) and I doubt mapbox collected more data than Apple is now.
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The owners of a commercial search engine say that it's inevitable that a commercial search engine will succumb to evil. Hmmm.
Not to put too fine a point on it, they once said that - the linked paper from Brin and Page was published in 1998, when they were still students.
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I'm a bit uncomfortable with how much DDG's marketing is focused on trashing their competition. They deliberately obfuscate privacy issues to strengthen their narrative. Sure duckduckgo is a good company right now, but that's only because they're small. I doubt they'll stay that way when they capture a significant market share.
Well, they certainly can't compete on search quality.
DDG satisfies most of my searches on the first go, and I’ve never had success with !g after a failed DDG query.
Furthermore, the Google results has a cluttered design with sparse information, so it takes much longer to figure out that I haven’t found what I’m looking for.
I’d say Google is the one failing to compete on search quality. At one point they did, but now Google’s consumer products compete on brand awareness and price, which they can only do because of their conquests in the advertising industry. Most people are not Google’s customer, they are part of Google’s enterprise product: the attention of people whose data profiles meet various requirements.
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You can do that with Apple Maps as well, I can't say "always" but for a long time at least, though I can't speak for how fast they'll necessarily deal with it. But if you set a marker then there will be a "Report an Issue" button down below at the bottom of its info panel/pane. Amongst the options there is "Add a Place" which can also be a street, and there is a free form "Other Issue" (which you can attach a photo t…
Good to know. Has this really been around for that long? I swear I was reading about this as an issue for Apple Maps just recently.
Having said all that, I just checked some of the entries I made way back when, which I did with full write ups, my source, photos, and in one case I was in fact the business head of IT and provided that from my work email and a device on our business Apple ID even. And I'm positive those were accepted and on the map for at least 6 months while I was still there. Yet now I look and nothing, and they definitely are still in business at the same location. That's kind of a crappy. If Apple accepts user submissions but then blows them away from time to time during map source fusion say it could explain some of their paucity of data and would discourage more submissions from those few who bothered in the first place.
I started using DDG (slowly trying to remove Google as much out of my daily life as possible) after reading about how Google ATAP tried to patent a MIT researchers life’s work without her knowledge or consent.
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Apple’s main business is hardware, and software that helps sell the hardware. Any revenue from data is likely a seperate, minor stream; and for it to become a significant one, likely requires significant changes in Apple’s operations. Like any other hardware company, they don’t need google’s kind of data collection to make money. But DDG is primarily funded by search, and the search business is funded by ads, which a…
I believe apple has ridden the hardware train about as far as it goes. There's no money in laptops and desktops anymore. The latest android phones are good enough. The "apple store experience" has become a dystopian nightmare compared to almost any other form of shopping. Constant pressure to increase earnings will inevitably force them to move a larger and larger percentage of their business to data and start stripi…
As is, many of the Mac diehards I know have migrated their kids off the platform in the past year or two, and some have made the leap themselves. Its a sea of change from just a few years ago.
I'm looking forward to the day that privacy and convenience are mainstream again(if there were ever). This feature is a right step on that direction.
When was convenience not mainstream, except in the earlier days of the Internet before centralized logins (e.g. Google, Facebook), which are associated with a tradeoff in privacy?
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Apple’s main business is hardware, and software that helps sell the hardware. Any revenue from data is likely a seperate, minor stream; and for it to become a significant one, likely requires significant changes in Apple’s operations. Like any other hardware company, they don’t need google’s kind of data collection to make money. But DDG is primarily funded by search, and the search business is funded by ads, which a…
Apple collects and uses data all the time. Their marketing kind of claims they don't, but their privacy policy is very clear that they do. For example they continuously collect GPS position + list of WiFi APs from iPhone users to build their crowd-source'd wifi location database: "To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location da…
You are seemingly suggesting that they do Google-style data collection where data is attached to a specific user. It’s a disingenuous interpretation of their privacy policy (both the marketing version and the legal version.)
https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Differential_Privacy_Over...
What should actually be eye opening is how Apple actually does protect privacy. They should be applauded and not condemned.
I’m a bit concerned about how much data Google has on me and I do think Apple is genuinely more concerned about user privacy. But what’s the difference in practical terms really? Google uses my data to target ads at me but doesn’t actually give any of my data to its ad-buying customers. Apple doesn’t do this but is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena. Since this is really the scenari…
Apple must of course comply with a subpoena, but it can only hand over data it holds the keys to. The iOS Security whitepaper[1] goes into some details. Any encryption keys that are stored in iCloud Keychain "share[] the security characteristics of iCloud Keychain—the keys are available only on the user’s trusted devices, and not to Apple or any third party." This is used for some, but not all, categories of iCloud data today—iMessage transcripts, for instance, are safe only if you do not use iCloud Backup.
1: https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide....
Your post makes it sound like Google targeting ads to you and Apple complying with legal data requests happen with the same frequency, which is obviously false, and definitely is a difference in practical terms for the everyday user.
According to Apple's transparency report[2], they gave data up in 2,088 account requests in the United States in the first half of 2018.
2: https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-request...