Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#371

Post by yazaddaruvala » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

realusername wrote: post #364

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point is that Apple is selling an Apple experience, not an overwhelming flood of "fix it yourself" freeware. Users who want that can get it elsewhere, they shouldn't be forced to suffer it on iOS as well. > That argument would be fine if we had plenty of mobile OS providers So your problem is Apple solved the customer problem so well with “an Apple experience” that all other phone OSes were abandoned. And…

> So your problem is Apple solved the customer problem so well with “an Apple experience” that all other phone OSes were abandoned. I don't really care how and why those two companies got their monopoly, that's beside the point. > And as a result Apple should be forced to ruin that experience beloved by their customers, so that the relatively small number of software developers make a little more money? There's hundr…

> I don't really care how and why those two companies got their monopoly, that's beside the point.

How do you expect to beat Apple or even an argument on the internet, let alone with Congress, if you’re not even willing to learn from your (so called) competitors?

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#372

Post by simonh » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

sellyme wrote: post #356

simonh wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in a teeny tiny minority. I made it clear I'm talking about the mass market. These arguments are made under the false presence (or delusion) that they are in the interests of the broad base of users who would get lower prices. They would not, we can see that clearly from the Android and PC games markets. These arguments are being made by a tiny minority for the benefit of a small community of techies who alre…

> You are in a teeny tiny minority Minority? Probably. Tiny? Absolutely not. Here [0] is a breakdown of 70 popular Steam games by the source of purchase for their reviewers as of a year ago. About 28% of all Steam purchases happen outside of Steam itself, with Valve getting a 0% cut. Note that for many games a majority of reviewers did not purchase it on Steam itself. 0: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1IC…

Reviewers are a tiny minority of users and there's no reason to suspect they are typical.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#373

Post by realusername » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:13 AM UTC

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #371

realusername wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your problem is Apple solved the customer problem so well with “an Apple experience” that all other phone OSes were abandoned. I don't really care how and why those two companies got their monopoly, that's beside the point. > And as a result Apple should be forced to ruin that experience beloved by their customers, so that the relatively small number of software developers make a little more money? There's hundr…

> I don't really care how and why those two companies got their monopoly, that's beside the point. How do you expect to beat Apple or even an argument on the internet, let alone with Congress, if you’re not even willing to learn from your (so called) competitors?

Which competitors? They aren't any. I expect anti-trust laws to be applied, as simple as that.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#374

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #237

dtx1 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because Google is responsible for most of the software on said product. Who would be receiving that telemetry data if it wasn't Google? Depends, on Android maybe. On my Android Device, not really i don't use google software with the exception of the core android system without gplay services. On iOS, the HTML Based Web, or Desktop Systems, I see no need for google to exist. If you need telemetry, run your own damn…

>Depends, on Android maybe. On my Android Device, not really i don't use google software with the exception of the core android system without gplay services. On iOS, the HTML Based Web, or Desktop Systems, I see no need for google to exist. If you need telemetry, run your own damn telemtry server instead of feeding the FAANG Privacy nightmare even more. The article is specifically about the mobile OSes and the defau…

Your arguments all ultimately focus on the value telemetry generates for the company, not for the user. These two should theoretically coincide, but in practice, they don't. Telemetry may be a fine thing in the abstract, but it's mostly used in a very hostile manner.

People would be more comfortable with telemetry if they could trust it's being used only to fix bugs and improve workflows. The reality is far from that, though. Telemetry's main use in end-user software is to provide data to direct various aspects of development that ultimately boil down to: how can we extract more money from our users? That's part of the reason we get dumbified apps full of questionable design decisions and user-hostile anti-features. Instead of asking people what software they want, "data-driven" companies are just setting up a control system around their users, with changes in the software being meant to influence behavior towards better monetization.

Until that gets fixed, I'm going to keep preemptively blocking any and all telemetry. I'm also very happy that GDPR forced companies to surface a lot of hidden surveillance, and that I can just dismiss all these notifications knowing I'm legally opted out by default. To the extent I am in fact opted in - i.e. companies literally breaking the law - I yearn for the day DPAs in member states get serious about issuing fines. Until then, the next time I spot telemetry enabled by default, so help me God I'm filing a GDPR complaint.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#375

Post by tgv » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

kuratkull wrote: post #162

teraflop wrote: post #25

"20X more telemetry", in terms of data usage, is a pretty meaningless statistic on its own (unless it's large enough to affect your mobile data cap or something). For instance, I would consider it a much bigger privacy violation for my phone to transmit my exact location every hour than my current CPU usage every 10 seconds.

I was also surprised by the emphasis on "20x more data" aspect. The table on kinds-of-data sent was showing Apple in a much more negative light.

The article is surprisingly short on details. E.g., Google does know your location and the Wifi APs, it's just not the OS that sends it.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#376

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

marshmallow_12 wrote: post #89

beforeolives wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more concerning thing about the car data is that the manafacturers resell it to third parties and those third parties have the right to resell it again. It's a mess. As a comparison, I don't know if much of Google's data ever leaves Google.

i'm getting the impression that iot providers have far, far lower privacy standards vs dedicated tech providers. This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick. This is not a constructive way to advance iot.

> This to me indicates that they don't take the internet capability of their kettles/cars seriously enough. It's just a gimmick.

Of course it is, and of course they don't. There are exactly two reasons why stuff like cars or kettles get connected to the Internet:

1) A value-add gimmick to justify a price hike on what's pretty much a commodity product;

2) A way to lock you into paying (with money or data) for a cloud service, using a physical appliance as an anchor.

Actual utility of an Internet-connected appliance doesn't even enter the picture.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#377

Post by plater » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:26 AM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #82

rdw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. A sibling comment notes that Steam charged 30% at the time (though some had better deals) but it's worth noting that Steam was not an open platform that anyone could publish on. Much like for consoles, to put a game on Steam you had to have a preexisting relationship with Valve, or try to de…

It depends of course on how you published. When I was authoring software (over two decades ago) and a company acted as publisher they took 85% of gross. For author/publisher relationships at that time, this was pretty typical (book authors/publishers being the closest analog). Needless to say there was, in addition to the cost of creating and shipping floppies, advertising that the publisher had to cover. Apple's 30%…

You are probably right about the cut the publisher took, but the margins are still higher for Apple as they have very low costs of marketing, distribution etc. In fact I think Apple charges way more if you consider the margins.

The other problem is of course that no one else can really enter this space. It's now only Apple and Google. It will be very hard for anyone else to enter. There were many more publishers and the competition and differentiation was higher.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#378

Post by salamandersauce » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #357

addicted wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a couple of stores that were more expensive. But there's 2 reasons the comparisons aren't valid: 1) The revolution Apple brought to mobile phones was making them personal computers. So the relevant comparison really should be with personal computers and I doubt any of them had stores that took as much of a cut. 2) More relevant, the vast majority of such app stores which charged 40-50% were optional market…

My phone can’t run an IDE or compile code, can’t run solid works, can’t be shared with multiple people, can’t render CGI, can’t mine BTC, and can’t run office, etc. If this is a personal computer, solely because it runs a browser, then the goalposts have shifted dramatically.

It can run Microsoft Office. You can program in a Python IDE and run code (Pythonista). You can create CGI on an iPhone.

Most of the limitations you mention like compiling are completely arbitrary and added by Apple. The devices are powerful enough and it's easy enough to do everything on a $300 Android phone.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#379

Post by fsflover » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #165

swebs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it can make calls, transfer data over cellular networks, and access a web browser. For some people, that's all they need. For maps, I use Nextcloud Maps through Firefox. You can also use Google Maps that way or whatever OSM provider. It comes with a Telegram client and Matrix client. >no powerful browser beyond the clunky Desktop-Firefox-for-Postmarket-OS hack, etc. I don't really know what you mean by this. It'…

> For some people, that's all they need. History tells us that when you have a device that does a few things that only for a tiny minority of people – within already a tiny minority of nerds – are "all that they need", and the dev community is so small, there is no future to the device. For someone who was around in the OpenMoko and Nokia N900 days, it is hard not to see the PinePhone as a stillborn device, which wil…

> Browsing Google Maps is a joke on the PinePhone's weak processor.

So you probably need Librem 5 for more performance. There is also OpenStreetMap, which is much faster.

> Desktop Firefox was never designed to work at those screen dimensions.

It already mostly works. Software updates make it more usable every week.

Re: Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS

#380

Post by ntr-- » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 11:01 AM UTC

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #357

addicted wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a couple of stores that were more expensive. But there's 2 reasons the comparisons aren't valid: 1) The revolution Apple brought to mobile phones was making them personal computers. So the relevant comparison really should be with personal computers and I doubt any of them had stores that took as much of a cut. 2) More relevant, the vast majority of such app stores which charged 40-50% were optional market…

My phone can’t run an IDE or compile code, can’t run solid works, can’t be shared with multiple people, can’t render CGI, can’t mine BTC, and can’t run office, etc. If this is a personal computer, solely because it runs a browser, then the goalposts have shifted dramatically.

Your phone likely has an order of magnitude more computational power than the machines that were used to code and build some of the programs you mentioned.

The fact that iOS/Android prevents you from installing gcc does not mean it is unable to do so.

You could use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard and output HDMI over the usb/lightning port and have a super portable dev machine if the OS was so inclined.