Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

support.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 117 posts

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#61

Post by mattkrause »

the_snooze wrote: post #35
jhall1468 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are scraping this from my emails without my permission, what else are they scraping? YOU GAVE THEM YOUR PERMISSION. Maybe, in the future, read the TOS and Privacy Policies rather than just pressing accept and acting offended when they do EXACTLY what they said they'd do. Had you done that, you'd also know exactly who has access to that information and, if you read when they notify you of policy updates, who…

MISTER PROSSER: But Mister Dent the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months! ARTHUR DENT: Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything. MISTER PROSSER: The plans were on display. ARTHUR DENT: Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habi…

ARTHUR DENT: Yes yes I did. It was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#62

Post by blihp »

tern wrote: post #37

> You don't have any purchases Any idea why I might not see any purchases here?

You've done a good job of (inadvertently?) not providing Google with emails it knows how to scrape. Basically what they are doing is scraping common email layouts like Amazon order/delivery confirmations. If you don't have those well known confirmation formats arriving in your inbox, they have nothing to scrape.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#63

Post by propogandist »

fitzroy wrote: post #19

I've always assumed they do this since they've recognized and surfaced flight and event information for years. I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable. Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you p…

Google is in the business of advertising. They do not stand to profit from giving you that information, unless they had an affiliate link from an advertiser that offered similar services for a lower price who'd be willing to pay X to acquire a new customer.

While this level of ad targeting is not available, based on the gmails they read, they have it on your profile.

Also, you can always buy your own domain name for a few dollars and take it with you anywhere, hosting with reliable email providers.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#64

Post by beaner »

onion2k wrote: post #50
beaner wrote: post #21

I kind of like this. It's already in my email, which they host. I don't see why I should not want this feature, where they aggregate helpful information for me.

If all they're doing is presenting your data in a better way then it's great. However, it's very likely that they're also selling adverts based on that data, and possibly selling the data itself. Do you really want your health insurance provider to be able to buy a list of restaurant bookings you've made? Or how about the airline you're about to book with knowing what you paid a competitor last time so they don't nee…

I think this comment is a great example of why I think most of the privacy concerns, especially around Google these days, are mostly overblown.

I am not afraid of that example happening because that is not how Google operates.

Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox.

The advertiser has absolutely no idea who I am, and google never "sold my data".

Who would even by such data in any volume meaningful enough for Google to consider it as a source of revenue compared to ads, especially given the privacy concerns?

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Google's own terms even explicitly prevent them from revealing my identity in such a way.

To be Frank, I have a suspicion that HN has been bamboozled by a continuous Apple smear campaign. When Android started becoming more of a threat, and they pretty obviously couldn't take on things like Maps, they defaulted to an argument that they sort of have by default, by virtue of the fact that they sell hardware, not software: Privacy.

And they're not even that good at it. Remember the mac root mistake not too long ago? Google actually has to maintain strict data privacy to survive. Apple, not so much. It's an easy argument for them to promote, and people are lapping it up.

Google had a "data extraction team" (I forget what it was actually called), before it was even cool. It was a team internally years ago that was like, "people have a right to view, export, and remove their own data, so we're going to build that into Google products." And they were allowed to do that. Like, years ago. A long time before this recent wave of skepticism started. I always appreciated that. You heard stories of that kind of thing from Google, then. Hardly ever competitors.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#65

Post by cromwellian »

If you used Inbox, it also categorizes flights, hotels, calendar entries, restaurant reservations, bills, newsletters, forums, social media updates, and a host of other useful functions, extracting out entities. The Finances, Purchases, and Trips bundles are extremely useful.

This information isn't solely surfaceable in Inbox or Gmail UI, go to any Google Search box and type "my purchases" or "my flights" or "my reservations".

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#66

Post by mcny »

saagarjha wrote: post #53
romed wrote: post #17

A very good feature of gmail’s extensive “email intelligence” that grew out of Inbox. How did you think the Purchases label worked? How did you think Google Now alerts you on your mobile when your packages are delivered? If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label works. Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay your bills.

Why can't this be done offline?

> Why can't this be done offline?

Where? On every device a user owns?

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#67

Post by zavi »

romed wrote: post #17

A very good feature of gmail’s extensive “email intelligence” that grew out of Inbox. How did you think the Purchases label worked? How did you think Google Now alerts you on your mobile when your packages are delivered? If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label works. Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay your bills.

Also when you browse Google maps you can see reservation dates on hotels and other venues. I thought the fact that Google scrapes emails to power other services was obvious by now.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#68

Post by beaner »

ve55 wrote: post #46
beaner wrote: post #21

I kind of like this. It's already in my email, which they host. I don't see why I should not want this feature, where they aggregate helpful information for me.

You can't think up a single reason why you might not want every purchase you've made in your entire life to be logged in a centralized database completely outside of your control and view which will be kept forever and shared with an unknowable amount of unknown powerful entities that do not care about your well-being? Some people are going to have a very rough time when reality finally strikes them with all of its m…

They already have my email receipts, what's the difference?

I use venmo - they have it too.

My credit card companies are private companies. Where's the outrage regarding them?

Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#69

Post by charlesism »

ve55 wrote: post #46
beaner wrote: post #21

I kind of like this. It's already in my email, which they host. I don't see why I should not want this feature, where they aggregate helpful information for me.

You can't think up a single reason why you might not want every purchase you've made in your entire life to be logged in a centralized database completely outside of your control and view which will be kept forever and shared with an unknowable amount of unknown powerful entities that do not care about your well-being? Some people are going to have a very rough time when reality finally strikes them with all of its m…

    > when reality finally strikes them with all of its might.
In case someone accuses @ve55 of melodrama, "reality" could be as banal as your most embarrassing personal emails leaking to the world.

Re: See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations

#70

Post by masonic »

the_snooze wrote: post #35
jhall1468 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are scraping this from my emails without my permission, what else are they scraping? YOU GAVE THEM YOUR PERMISSION. Maybe, in the future, read the TOS and Privacy Policies rather than just pressing accept and acting offended when they do EXACTLY what they said they'd do. Had you done that, you'd also know exactly who has access to that information and, if you read when they notify you of policy updates, who…

MISTER PROSSER: But Mister Dent the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months! ARTHUR DENT: Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything. MISTER PROSSER: The plans were on display. ARTHUR DENT: Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habi…

You left out the best line:

ARTHUR DENT: Yes. It was "on display" in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard!”. Ever thought of going into advertising?

Post reply on HN