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

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

#41

Post by ProfessorLayton »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #7

As users, we are assured that telemetry is only for the purpose of "improving products and services", "improving user experience", etc. If one company is collecting 20x as much as another, all else being equal, one would expect that this would be reflected in the quality of the product/service/experience. Of course, Google's service is to advertisers, first and foremost. Users generally do not pay for what they recei…

YMMV, but as much as I like Apple Maps and use it as much as I can, for the more complex/unknown routes I definitely rely more on Google Maps to get it right. I don't know if telemetry is the cause for the better service, but it is noticeably better for me.

Separately, I'm also a google customer as I run an Ad campaign for a small business (skilled labor), and the dollars spent on search ads are extremely efficient with an incredible ROI. Even with CACs in the 10s of dollars, with the size of the contracts being signed it typically costs much less than .5% of the total.

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

#42

Post by neura »

jayd16 wrote: post #12
onedognight wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find My Phone? It is a choice to enroll in this, and it’s mighty convenient when you lose or get your phone stolen.

That works when you're not logged in?

Can you even imagine? Lost your phone? Did you make sure that you were logged in before you lost it? Did the thief reset the phone and log you out? Oh, guess you can't find your phone now. Sorry.

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

#43

Post by scep12 »

the_dune_13 wrote: post #5
mankyd wrote: post #3

Not mentioned in the headline: When the user is _not_ logged in, iOS collects "location" whereas Android does not. I am actually a little surprised that iOS would gather this information. What use would it serve?

Find my iphone?

This is for logged-out. I believe find-my-iphone is only for users logged into their iCloud accounts.

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

#44

Post by swebs »

davidkellis wrote: post #18

What are the best alternatives to iOS and Android? Is it reasonable to consider the hardware itself "safe", given that the software tracks and calls home about every single thing it does? What are the alternatives?

Manjaro Phosh edition on the Pinephone is pretty good these days. There's still a lot of work to be done, but it works just fine as a phone.

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

#46

Post by danielrhodes »

Data collection is what companies do when they have no empathy. It's like an ivory tower effect where you don't interact with customers day to day or don't know what they want, so you try to use data to fill in the (large) gap. I could come up with countless examples of amazing products where nobody was using data to justify their decisions.

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

#47

Post by wruza »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #7

As users, we are assured that telemetry is only for the purpose of "improving products and services", "improving user experience", etc. If one company is collecting 20x as much as another, all else being equal, one would expect that this would be reflected in the quality of the product/service/experience. Of course, Google's service is to advertisers, first and foremost. Users generally do not pay for what they recei…

You bet they are improving. I don’t know any big vendor who is worse than google in ux. Another question is, where is the good old “hiring few hundred users from different groups and watching what they do with a test device” instead of spying on millions of the same kind.

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

#48

Post by andrewzah »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #27
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #7

As users, we are assured that telemetry is only for the purpose of "improving products and services", "improving user experience", etc. If one company is collecting 20x as much as another, all else being equal, one would expect that this would be reflected in the quality of the product/service/experience. Of course, Google's service is to advertisers, first and foremost. Users generally do not pay for what they recei…

I don't think this is necessarily true. I believe that Google Maps navigation and location accuracy is significantly better on Android than iOS (no claim on 20x...but anectdatally better) Google Maps getting more precise telemetry data is actually so useful in improving the navigation experience in tricky intersections, overlapping roads, or low bandwidth areas where GPS signal and service can be spotty. I can speak…

Also anecdotally speaking, conversely, I used to use Waze/Google Maps, and nowadays just use Apple Maps. The latter has been more than sufficient in my day to day travels. I can't think of any errors in navigation.

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

#49

Post by qwertox »

Zhenya wrote: post #38
esrauch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The live transcription behavior is enabled by a button at the bottom of the volume control toggle. If it transcribes even if that button is off that seems a lot more concerning. I don't think transcribing on device and then uploading would make any sense: for something like podcasts they could just do serverside transcription (they already do for youtube videos at least).

1) press volume down 2) you should see the volume dialog with a box with squiggly lines in it at the bottom of the volume slider 3) press that to turn it off

Thanks to both of you.

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

#50

Post by jariel »

Both Google and Apple forbid health agencies around the world wanting to install apps to store similar data for the purposes of pandemic data and suppression - which is understandable that many governments would use it for all sorts of nefarious reasons, but it's also rather hypocritical that they can infer that 'we can use it for whatever because quality. And advertising'.
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