
Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch - kawera
http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/google-you-creepy-sonofabitch/
======
saulrh
I'm going to be completely honest here: If these things were behind a
configuration option and defaulted to off, I'd have gone into my phone and
turned that option on. I _want_ to leave reviews for restaurants as I'm
walking out of them - it serves the common good and doing it immediately is
better for memory. I _want_ to remember to download offline maps when I'm
about to go somewhere where I won't have coverage. My memory is terrible
enough that I can't do those things myself. Google obviously can't provide
this service out of the goodness of its heart, of _course_ it's going to have
self-serving tweaks added on, but I consider those to be easily worth the
value I get out of Google Prosthetic Associative Memory.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Also, if they were behind a configuration option and defaulted to on, most
people would be fine turning it off and forgetting about it.

This seems to be about lack of control. It's good for developers to think
carefully before they ship products that do things with no way of being told
not to.

EDIT: Welp. Apparently these settings exist.

I don't understand the point of the blog post then. Why is it so upsetting, if
you have the ability to turn it off?

~~~
aiiane
Maps app -> Settings -> Notifications -> Your Contributions (and uncheck boxes
as desired).

The controls exist.

~~~
crag
But does that mean Google stops collecting the data? Sure, no notifications,
but will they still know what restaurant I just walked past?

~~~
izacus
As mentioned several times, disable Location History under Settings -> Google
-> Location (on stock Google Androids you find that setting under Settings ->
Location as well).

------
FreakyT
This issue reminds me of a key permission iOS gives control over while Android
(even post-Nougat) doesn't:

The distinction between allowing an app to use location _while the app is
open_ versus _anytime_.

Android makes no distinction between these two states, which opens up the
ability for many apps (not just Google's) to enable automatic stalking mode.
Take Yelp, for example. I _do_ want it to be able to access my location so I
can easily lookup restaurants nearby. However, on Android, once you give Yelp
the location permission, it'll start popping up notifications about things
near your current location, which is just creepy. On iOS, you can restrict it
to only be able to see your location when using the app, which is what I want
for most apps.

~~~
adregan
Yes! And the newest version of iOS grants you the ability to say "while using
the app" for any app rather than just the apps where the developer gave the
user that option.

~~~
duskwuff
And if an iOS app does request access to the user's location while in the
background, it's required to have a _specific_ explanation of why it needs
that:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ge...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Reference/InfoPlistKeyReference/Articles/CocoaKeys.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009251-SW18)

~~~
mrguyorama
I really wish I didn't dislike apple and hate their UI and design

------
turc1656
Serious question for the HN community - why do you leave your GPS on/activated
by default? I have mine disabled unless I specifically need it for something,
which is rare. Usually the only time I ever need GPS is for driving
instructions. Otherwise, it's off. GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the
device. Why would you leave this on? Do you all use it far more frequently or
was it something you never thought to shut off? I can't think of one app I use
that requires my location other than weather, in which case I just set the
location(s) I want and can refresh at any time. But I generally get weather
from a saved DuckDuckGo search - "[zipcode] weather" \- stored as a bookmark
and problem solved.

On a related note, Google has created a tool that allows you to see all the
data they have on you (and delete it if you want). Because of the way I set up
everything and my habits, they had virtually nothing on me. The only stuff I
think were some chats from years and years ago and a few searches I did while
not in incognito mode on my phone. I also don't use any of their apps from
their main product suite - no search, email, chat, drive, etc. And I never
leave myself logged in to my account on anything. I don't think this reduces
my productivity or quality of life at all. In fact, quality of life is almost
certainly improved.

~~~
nkurz
Good comment. Might be worth mentioning that turning GPS off reduces the
accuracy of your location, but does not prevent it from being known:
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-
location...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location-
tracking-cell-tower-data-android-os-firebase-privacy)

 _GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device._

I'd be surprised that this is true. I used several battery monitor apps on
several phones, and never found this to the case. It's a simple receiver, and
doesn't require much power to do so. If you find a correspondence, it may be
more likely that the power is actually being used by the apps that are using
GPS, rather than the GPS itself: [http://alienmantech.com/blog/android-
disable-gps-save-batter...](http://alienmantech.com/blog/android-disable-gps-
save-battery-power/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
>> _GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device._

 _Something_ is, but I find it _very_ hard to believe it's the GPS itself.
It's, after all, a completely _passive_ system. What eats battery is
transmissions and computation; with GPS, the first doesn't happen, and there
isn't much of the second either.

I guess what happens is (on some phones; I've kept GPS always active on my
Galaxy S4 and S7, and never noticed a difference) having GPS active makes
various services run in your system, which may or may not be poorly written /
poorly integrated with phone's power management.

~~~
ryandrake
On modern phones, you are unlikely to observe any power savings by turning off
GPS or "location services".

The GPS is only going to use significant battery power when it is acquiring or
actively calculating fixes. No device or OS vendor would ship software that
burns the GPS at all times--your device's battery wouldn't last more than a
few hours.

The grandparent is totally incorrect about the GPS being the biggest battery
hog on the device. Not even close, unless you are, 24 hours a day, navigating
or running some other application that requires continuous (1 second duty
cycle) GPS fixes. Even then, your backlight is likely consuming an order of
magnitude more power.

------
chrisfosterelli
The idea that you'd have any location privacy while carrying around a cell
phone is absurd. Both iPhone and Android devices record location history, and
your network provider always has a rough guess of where you are. It may be
annoying that Google is very persistent about trying to build its maps
dataset, but the suggestion that it's not happening on other devices is crazy.

~~~
geofft
There's a huge and meaningful distinction about the technical ability to
violate your privacy, and actually doing so, and trust (slash non-creepiness)
is largely about not doing so when you could. For instance, the fact that my
roommate can open my bedroom door at any time does not mean that I have no
privacy when making phone calls in my room; it means that I have privacy
because I trust my roommate not to do so, except perhaps in an emergency. A
roommate who randomly opens my door and comments on my conversations would be
a creepy roommate.

iPhone gives you lots of controls around location history, and certainly there
is nothing in the iPhone ecosystem where they want you to contribute reviews
or human analysis to help them with gathering data. I trust that these
controls work. My cell phone provider knows where I am to route calls, but I
trust that they aren't also keeping the data for fun / marketing / etc.

The suggestion that it _couldn 't_ happen on other devices is certainly at
odds with technical capabilities; the suggestion that it _isn 't_ happening is
a different one entirely, and is not crazy.

~~~
someguydave
Your cell phone cannot function without actually knowing where you are (to
some approximation) at all times. This information is known to the phone
company, at the very least. The phone company almost always records and
retains that information. Similarly, you cannot communicate to anyone on the
internet without using an IP address, which your counterparty must know and
nearly always retains.

~~~
rhizome
_Your cell phone cannot function without actually knowing where you are (to
some approximation) at all times._

That's like saying a transistor radio needs to know where broadcast antennas
are, which is obviously absurd.

~~~
wvenable
It's a cellular telephone -- they need to know all the cell towers near you
and direct your phone between them. It's a rough area but my phone provider
definitely knows I'm at work right now.

~~~
rhizome
GP said, "cannot function." How did cellphones work before they came with GPS?

~~~
geofft
They registered with the nearest cell towers, and ask them to watch signal
strength so they can make handover work. This is coarse location information
(since the company that runs the cell towers knows where their own cell
towers, and uses your current tower registration to figure out which cell
tower to send a call to), and can be made a little more fine-grained if you
use signal strength from the various towers and triangulate. This does not
involve the Global Positioning System or other satellite-based positioning
systems at all.

If it does not do this, it is not a _cellular_ phone. There are other types of
portable phones that don't work this way, like cordless landline phones (the
base doesn't know where it is, just that it's plugged into a phone jack) or
satellite phones. But the "cellular" part refers specifically to dividing up
the terrain into cells, finding which cell the phone is in, and assigning it
to a tower based on that determination.

(This is all pretty irrelevant to the point I was making above that cellular
network operators can easily choose not to use the location information or
signal strength information for anything other than routing calls, and that
deciding that they can just use the information however they want would be
creepy.)

~~~
rhizome
And that's fine, but none of this addresses the assertion that cellphones _can
't work_ without GPS tracking.

~~~
khedoros1
GPS tracking is a complete red herring; you're focusing on the wrong thing. No
one ever claimed that GPS was necessary. Here's the statement that was made:
"Your cell phone cannot function without actually knowing where you are (to
some approximation)".

That "approximation" is: "Which cell towers can hear your phone transmit, and
how strong is the signal?" Your cell phone would work just as well as a phone
if you disabled the GPS chip, but your location can be estimated by
triangulating from signal strength. It's not nearly as precise, or as
accurate, as a GPS-provided location would be, of course.

~~~
rhizome
_No one ever claimed that GPS was necessary_

The context of this thread is Android and Apple's tracking of location history
and I'm just trying to stay on topic. Not without downvotes, natch.

This isn't Reddit, I'm not an idiot, and I know how cellphones work. Try to be
more charitable.

------
fwdpropaganda
Two things that happened to me:

A) I walk into a store, get a notification from google photos asking me "I see
you're at store X, wouldn't you like to take some pictures?". Possibly to use
as part of google maps. Thinking back I think this is when I started de-
googlifying my life.

B) I get a notification from google maps asking me "you're travelling to place
X soon, wouldn't you like to download an offline map, just in case you don't
have connection there?" Google must have learned that because I had the plane
ticket on gmail.

~~~
fenwick67
#1 is so obnoxious. No Google, I won't do free work for you. At least offer me
some store credit.

~~~
bootloop
Do you pay for their service? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
lorenzhs
They make money by showing me ads, so yes, I do. Just not in a direct monetary
exchange.

------
pdelbarba
Disregarding the privacy issues, I find this to also be insanely annoying. I
want notifications to be important. Not a bunch of spam that ultimately
equates to advertising.

~~~
tacomonstrous
You can turn off these notifications in the Maps app. It's annoying they're on
by default though.

~~~
brndnmtthws
You shouldn't have to opt out of spam.

~~~
Anderkent
For most people it's not spam.

~~~
brndnmtthws
They're using it as a way of increasing their ad revenue by getting free data
from their users. How is that not spam? If I send you unsolicited emails
asking you to give me photos of products you use which I'll then sell ads for
and keep all the revenue, would that not be spam?

I did not sign up for any product promotion notifications, so if I receive any
it's spam.

~~~
lern_too_spel
They pay the user for it with increased Google Drive space, a free
subscription to the NYT, etc.

~~~
rspeer
Only if you sign up for Local Guides.

I did out of curiosity after I answered a few questions, and sincerely
regretted it. The notifications and junk e-mail were never-ending until I
blocked them all. And my time is not worth that little.

~~~
lern_too_spel
You don't have to subscribe to the emails to get the benefits. The
notifications are the same as when you're not a local guide. I also signed up
to get the benefits.

~~~
rspeer
I'm pretty sure you do have to subscribe to the e-mails.

You may not have to _stay_ subscribed, but that's true in a sense for most
junk mail.

------
dwg
Growing pains on the way to a true digital personal assistant.

The industry has to figure out how to deal with privacy concerns, because a
digital assistant which is continuously aware of your location and what you're
doing will be tremendously useful. It's a little friend in your pocket that we
won't be able to imagine living without.

Traffic jam ahead? Got you covered.

Can't remember someones name? I've got it here.

Need to remember the name of that great you discovered last time you were in
this area? Got it here.

Looks like you need an ambulance.. it's on the way.

Privacy issues abound, but possibilities are endless and people _want_ these
features. At present many of the benefits from a smart phone that we have
become accustomed to are only possible because of data harvesting. Perhaps as
hardware continues to evolve, and these features commoditized we can convince
organizations that we will actually pay for the services if we can have
greater control over our data.

Thanks for sharing your views on what is "creepy". Not everyone agrees (as can
be seen from the comments) and I have a feeling that what feels creepy today
will seem normal tomorrow, but your concerns are valid.

~~~
KhanMahGretsch
>It's a little friend in your pocket

No, it's not. Google is entirely incentivised to extract the maximum amount of
value from those reliant on their services, and the level of dependence is
proportional to how much much they can potentially make off you. This is how a
company works, and this is fine, but it is very dangerous to imagine that
Google has anyone's best-interest at heart except their own.

~~~
brokenmachine
But it is symbiotic in some ways.

------
bob_theslob646
The real question is: is this creepy or ingenious?

The reality is that their products are the best because they are able to
crowdsource the masses for practically free.

Google Maps- How do you think they are so good with traffic and or know when a
place is busy? [Google admits it tracked user location data even when the
setting was turned off]([https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-
location...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location-
tracking-cell-tower-data-android-os-firebase-privacy))

Tensorflow- All those captchas you had to type and click? Yeah they were used
to digitize books and build an amazing clean image dataset. [Google Inc.
Acquires Carnegie Mellon Spin-off ReCAPTCHA
Inc.]([https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/google-inc-acquires-carnegie-
mel...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/google-inc-acquires-carnegie-mellon-spin-
recaptcha-inc)) ([https://techcrunch.com/2007/09/16/recaptcha-using-
captchas-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2007/09/16/recaptcha-using-captchas-to-
digitize-books/))

Some of it may be unethical, because they do not do a great job of explicitly
stating what they do with your data, but some of it may be for the greater
good.(intentions are not bad.) An example is traffic. I think in this case, I
would like them to know so that they can warn/tell others, to save others
time.

It is the wild wild west when it comes to data privacy laws in the U.S
compared to the E.U, because there are none and (currently) it is easier to
beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
reCAPTCHA is a freaking nightmare, it's gotten worse and worse, it often has
me go through two or three pages worth of image recognition puzzles before
letting me log in. And since it's used on non-Google sites, it's nearly
unavoidable.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
I got one the other day asking me to click on the “crosswalks”.

Seriously, Google, amongst the vast trove of information you hold on me/my IP
address will be “in Britain”, so maybe try writing in British English rather
than using a word that 90% of us won’t understand.

------
trqx
Yet the author attempts to shove google js down our throats.

[https://i.imgur.com/6AJLhnR.png](https://i.imgur.com/6AJLhnR.png)

~~~
fixermark
... while complaining about Google being creepy, nonetheless.

So "Creepy, but not SO creepy that I won't trust them to vend code that I'll
direct my readers' user agents to download", then. ;)

------
dawhizkid
I think this is called "shadow work"...Google has turned you into a mechanical
turk without pay :)

~~~
Chaebixi
> I think this is called "shadow work"...Google has turned you into a
> mechanical turk without pay :)

That's an excellent term!

Also, I can't favorite this comment for some reason. The link is missing.

edit: I guess replying fixed it?

------
dontnotice
It's always surprising how much comments and postings in these parts are
vehemently in opposition to data being usefully incorporated into these apps
and services, I remember a recent post about how Google's passive on device
music identification worked on the Pixel 2 which turned hostel.

I understand that certain types of people are attracted to certain topics but
it's still somewhat jarring when in a technology discussion board there is
this amount of anti tech sentiment.

This feature is useful, it puts that data gathered to a good use, and it's
upfront about it, if you don't like it just swipe the notification away.

Don't be fooled, the iPhone is gathering the same type of data it just only
snitches on non system apps doing so in the background. Not to mention that it
looks like they don't put that data to good use which as far as I'm concerned
is the greater sin.

~~~
KhanMahGretsch
I think the article primarily addresses the tone-deaf way in which Google
addresses the user, not so much the practice of gathering data and providing
useful suggestions to the user "like magic", which does indeed have it's
benefits.

There's an implied deal that the user will provide their data to Google so
they may profit from it, and in return they will provide you with a service
free-of-charge. The article, and some anecdotes here in the comments, indicate
that Google can be a little needy and tone-deaf in prompting the user to
provide them with even MORE data, at times. Instead of passively collecting
data, they appear to actively prompt the user to feed their machine, which is
very annoying and creepy in the author's opinion.

~~~
dontnotice
I was responding more to the comments in this thread.

------
creaghpatr
I've always found it kind of alarming in Waze that when you stop at an
intersection where there's a gas station they prompt you to enter an updated
gas price...even when the app presumes you are the driver.

I get that they're trying to get everyone to chip in for the common good but
not while I'm literally driving, please.

~~~
Zarath
I was using Google Maps the other day through Safari and got a pop up to
download the app during the middle of the route and I could barely see the
map. I nearly got in an accident trying to dismiss the pop up.

------
JepZ
Yeah, Google could still be the cool company they were around 2000, if they
just were not so greedy about collecting data for their Advertising
business...

Another thing is that every time you start using an Android phone, all Google
sync services are activated. So you have no chance to disable them until its
too late and Google uploaded all your contacts into their cloud. That should
be illegal.

~~~
fixermark
I'm not sure why people think the data is being collected for advertising, as
opposed to, say, improving the ground-truth on the Google Maps dataset.

I've contributed some images to the photo request. They end up appearing in
Maps as the picture of the establishment.

~~~
JepZ
Yeah, sure the pictures are for maps, but in the end Maps turned into a place
where businesses have to be present as it is the de facto location based
search engine. At the moment, I am not sure how they are making money with
maps, but I find it a little odd that they keep asking to contribute pictures
when it clearly shows that they are tracking every movement of you.

So something is wrong there (at the very least that they are tracking us all).

------
ucaetano
Wow, the author is surprised that when she/he shared her/his location with
Google, Google actually got her/his location.

If only Google made it ridiculously easy to disable this. Oh, wait, it does:

[https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en)

~~~
amelius
If you have to stop and think about every bad consequence of any of your
actions on your phone, then at some point the phone loses its usefulness, and
becomes a nuisance.

The device should think _for_ you, not _against_ you.

~~~
ucaetano
This isn't even your phone, this is your Google Account. Isn't even limited to
Android.

But yes, you should think of the consequences of signing up for a service that
clearly states that it records your location history.

------
laurent123456
What are these "Google" notifications? Is that a "Google" app generating them?
If so, can't it be disabled or uninstalled? I don't have this on my Android
phone but I've uninstalled or disabled everything Google related. And if you
don't want to be tracked, you can also switch off Location History.

~~~
kibwen
If you try to disable many Google-provided apps on Android, you're presented
with a scary-looking screen warning you about system instability, and it's
legit. If I attempt to disable Chrome on my phone, for instance, it causes
every single app on my phone to crash upon any interaction whatsoever,
including third-party apps like Signal. Funny how Chrome is more inseparable
from Android than Internet Explorer was from Windows.

~~~
Animats
I have Google Chrome turned off, and it works fine. I have Fennec, loaded via
F-Droid as my browser. You have to have some browser, but it doesn't have to
be Google Chrome.

One thing that seems to help is that, when I get a new phone, I turn all this
stuff off before connecting to anything or even putting in a SIM card. So
Google never gets a chance to control the phone's connections to the outside
world.

------
Anderkent
Hm. I find google map reviews fairly useful, and so don't mind contributing. I
don't know why my phone figuring out if I'm near a restaurant I would like is
creepy?

It's nowhere near as creepy as find my device, which everyone seems OK with.

~~~
chillingeffect
You're probably not thinking adversarially. Most of us aren't. Most of us love
all the features of technology.

However, there are bad apples in society, seeking shortcuts through taking
from others and harming them. And there are guardians in society, constantly
looking for vectors that a baddie can cause harm to protect them.

One emerging vector is the combination of market data to target individuals
for threat and harm. E.g. you piss someone or a group off, whether by
insulting them, simply the act of driving or eating meat, supporting a
political party they don't, etc. Then, that person or group purchases batches
of insufficiently anonymized marketing data, combines them to narrow down to
your profile and uses it to hunt you down.

E.g. restaurants. Someone could buy location, restaurant and driving data,
filter by several clues they discover about you, then stake out locations
where you'll be.

Now that I've explored the personal-revenge factor, consider a different type
of threat: economic survival. An adversarial corporation could use details
about your psychology gleaned from timing information, nutrition profile, age,
DNA/race, internet comments to influence you and larger groups in unethical
ways, such as encouraging you to live unhealthy lifestyles, presenting
carefully selected news items - not to harm you necessarily, but to perpetuate
their own gain at your cost.

And this doesn't even have to happen to you personally. It can happen to
targeted groups estimated to have vulnerabilities in any domain: middle-class,
new home-owners, teen-agers. And the baddies' efforts all increase in efficacy
the more information we leak.

So stop giving away all your information!

~~~
fixermark
If one doesn't trust Google as a data steward, I can totally see one being
deeply concerned about these data-request notifications and about the system
knowing their geolocation.

... but I can't follow why one would then continue to use Google Maps.

... or a phone running an OS that Google writes and maintains.

... or, in the case of this particular blog-post,
[https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.6.26/webfont...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.6.26/webfont.js)

------
JustSomeNobody
Hasn't Google been telling everyone for years that they want users to have
information at their fingertips? They've built their platform around this.
Google wants to do things like set a calendar reminder when it sees that you
got emailed a receipt for plane tickets. When they see you just ate a
restaurant they want to suggests things to do after (movie, play, concert,
etc). They've been telling everyone this is what they want to do.

So, if someone is using Google products, why are they freaked out about this?

------
gerash
The way I see it is Google is offering a free and optional yet pre-installed
service, namely Google maps, and is sometimes asking its users to contribute
to its POI dataset. It'll be both good for Google and its users if the
information about a restaurant is accurate or the gas prices for a gas station
is up to date. The notifications could be sent way too often and I get that
would be annoying but the whole concept isn't that bad.

~~~
ehsankia
This is a notification problem, not a privacy one. These people are just
annoyed that the app is sending them too many notification, and are outraged
at an entirely different thing. Google Maps' whole job is to know your
location; it having the location data is as much of a privacy violating as a
hospital having your heart rate.

------
seba_dos1
It's time again to advertise microG - free software reimplementation of Google
Play Services which allows one to somehow control their privacy without
abstaining from most of the Android software out there that require Play
Services. There are even constantly updated images of a preconfigured
LineageOS fork - [https://lineage.microg.org/](https://lineage.microg.org/)

------
daodedickinson
Google's creepy, but it seems the author should be savvy enough to know that
Facebook does a lot more than what is implied here. Facebook goes after you
all over the internet whether you have a Facebook account or not and won't let
you delete the dossier they have on you. I don't see much of an ethical
difference between the two companies; they are full of people chasing an ideal
of success that is opposed to mine.

------
singularity2001
This creep factor was _the main reason_ why I got another IPhone. As a
developer I'd much prefer an Android (hating the Apple Store but thats another
story), however as a _user_ Android was a total no-go.

~~~
singularity2001
I was even daring enough to install the superb Google keyboard on the iPhone
but only because they explicitly repeatedly say that they do not send my data
home. if they ever do Google is dead!

Speaking of: Why does Siri (mother of all bitches) thinks she needs my GPS in
order to tell me the weather??

~~~
dingdongding
Otherwise how the hell does Siri find out your accurate location to tell you
weather. your IP address?

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
People in this thread are clutching their pearls about invasion of privacy and
are going on about how they won't do any free work for Google yet hardly any
of them has voluntarily given a dime to Google in return of the tons of
services they get from it.

Where do you think all the reviews come from? Who puts information about
traffic cops on Waze? From a million monkeys smashing keyboards?

~~~
mike_ivanov
A paying Google customer here. The fact that I'm giving them quite more than a
dime doesn't make me exempt from stalking. What's your point?

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Are you paying for the reviews?

~~~
mike_ivanov
No, and I never pay attention to those reviews. They typically don't match the
actual experience.

------
mc32
Ah, finally, their G+ efforts finally bore fruit and shows their hand.

G+ has been the impetus behind all of this and has led Google away from their
core search and related tech and more into weaving itself into our daily
lives, mercilessly.

I love most of Goog, but G+ has diverted them into this social mess. It's
something I wish they'd left well enough alone.

------
geofft
The primary reason I have an iPhone is that I want to reach friends who use
Google Hangouts without having literally my entire device be logged in as my
Google account.

I used to solve this by having an Android with a dedicated account, and
logging the Hangouts app into my normal Google account, but that stopped
working a couple of Android versions ago.

~~~
izacus
And now you have a full device logged into an iCloud account. Which Apple is
pushing even more obnoxiously (and keeps pestering me about it on both iPad
and Mac after each update). What did you gain?

~~~
geofft
I have all my iCloud sync options off except for Find My iPhone, which isn't
something I can do with Google - it'll automatically sign me into everything.
And the sync options stay off, even though yes, they do pester me to turn more
things on. (Meanwhile, I found this morning that my Chromebook, which I have
specifically for high-security things like my domain name registrar and
privileged SSH keys, has gone ahead and turned on sync for everything again,
despite having turned it off multiple times in the past.)

Also, admittedly, part of the benefit here is simply that I don't use Apple
services (e.g., I don't use Facetime), I use Google services. I'd get the same
benefit if I were using any non-Google phone.

------
modzu
It's not so much the privacy that bugs be about this -- its the _cognitive
intrusion_ ; my phone vibrating for my attention only to look at it and see
this bullshit. Ick.

~~~
Too
Agree, this is the biggest issue. I get slightly annoyed by this but what's
worse is for old and non tech people. Has anyone at google studied for even 2
minutes how non tech people use a phone? My grandma panics every time there is
a notification that is not a SMS or a phone call. I opened her phone and there
was som many unread crap-notifications that you couldn't even find the ones
that were from her real friends. I get questions like how can i see if i have
any unread text messages, which is an instant proof that the UI is wrong.

Also the phrasing of these notifications make you think they were designed by
someone from Ryanair. "Add your photo to google maps" the instant you take a
photo could easily be confused with "Save this photo" for someone who doesn't
understand tech.

------
jccalhoun
I guess I don't see these things on my phone because I'm cheap and rarely ever
have data on.

But if I did, I wouldn't be shocked that a device with gps and internet access
knows where I am and a company that makes money by people using it because it
is useful would want to make their product more useful.

------
Doctor_Fegg
> We need some human help

So pay me.

~~~
fixermark
That'd be "Google Opinion Rewards"
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.paidtasks)),
and it does periodically throw surveys out about your travel history.

~~~
bob_theslob646
Do they actually pay users a fair wage for their time?

~~~
kevmo314
I get about 50c of credit for each survey which takes about 15s, so that comes
out to $2/min or $120/hr which seems pretty fair. Of course, you can't
actually do hours of these things.

~~~
mrguyorama
It's more like 0-12 cents per survey, and they vary from absolutely odd ("Have
you participated in a dance contest in the last month") to awful (most surveys
ask you to confirm where you went yesterday)

------
4bpp
The obvious countermeasure seems to be to feed them bullshit data (wrong
reviews, pictures from elsewhere and what-not), but for some curious reason
this feels antisocial against other Google users in a way that outweighs the
benefits of sabotaging their data collection. Attacking Google almost has
something of being an /r/atheism style gadfly.

(Well, there's also the problem that there is no telling how they would react
to an account getting flagged for nonsense submissions. Losing access to my
gmail would be a personal catastrophe well in excess of losing a full wallet
or two.)

------
rapnie
Well.. maybe an Android installation _without_ google (and samsung bloatware)
is something for you :)

[https://eelo.io/](https://eelo.io/)

------
mooreds
You could turn off location tracking on your phone. Yes, it makes life a bit
more inconvenient, but it lowers the creep factor significantly.

------
cromwellian
How is this functionality different than an app asking you to review it after
using it? The app “knows” your using it and prompts you to contribute to crowd
sourced app reviews in the App Store. Apple likely knows what apps you have
run unless you disable all diagnostics and lots of apps phone home.

In this case, geo fencing is prompting you to review a location instead of an
app.

I think people rely on a lot more crowdsourced information, much of it from
nagging or campaigning, than they realize and would be sad if it didn’t exist.
Waze has saved my bacon many times. Google Maps’s knowledge of near real time
bussiness congestion or closures has stopped me from wasting an hour driving
somewhere only to find out it’s closed or all full.

On the health front we could probably save millions of lives from disease if
more anonymized health records were available to researchers for application
of machine learning to medical histories or prediction of complications. So
much good could be done in the world.

~~~
megaman22
I've made it a policy that if an app pops up unsolicited modals to badger me
about rating it, it automatically gets a 0-start review. That pattern needs to
die in a fire.

~~~
aiCeivi9
It was already replaced by other pattern - it first asks for meaningless
rating in app and only if user selects 5 stars he is redirected to AppStore .

------
nikki93
It’s interesting how we use individual-inspired predicates when refering to
the complex identity “Google” in this thread — “Google wants ...” “Google
should ...” —- would Google get mad at you and stop talking to you when you do
something bad? I guess it would.

Who is Google? The alignment of the agency, benefit, desires, ... seems to lie
among various “actual” humans, it’s a distributed system across human
identities much like its actual software is distributed across servers.

I keep wondering whether interacting with it while assuming it to be motivated
in similar ways that individuals would be is a sensible approach in general,
and how we have constructed it to be so given our incentive and preference
systems (buying products, paying for services, etc.) It’s very much a mirror
of the human self: self centered, attached to its ego.

------
mcny
I am here pleading, begging Google to give me (and everyone else) an option to
set up a free of cost, always on VPN something like {this} but which you can
enable on any network all the time.

I don't mind Google having access to all my data as long as they are dominant.
The problem in my opinion is the push back they are getting from advertising
agencies (wsj is only a hired gun afaict)... I'm guessing one London based
plastic company in particular is waging a war on Google. If I were Google, I
would not share I formation about my property. It just doesn't make sense to
share this information with your customers.

{This}
[https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/6327199?visit_id=1-6...](https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/6327199?visit_id=1-636518928482913910-3054715947&p=wifi_assistant&rd=1)

~~~
jacksmith21006
Tend to agree. Is the data saving option with Chrome somewhat doing this?

I am in the US and our cable providers are now allowed to sell our Internet
data on sites we visit. We use Google DNS instead of ISP because of this and
hate how ISP injects into DNS with an ad and Google does not do this. Which
they could and make a ton of money.

But our ISP still has routing data in where we visit. I would like my data to
just be one place if possible and trust Google to be that place.

------
sharemywin
Not involved in the project but certainly support the premise:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290746744/eelo-a-
mobile...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/290746744/eelo-a-mobile-os-
and-web-services-in-the-public-in)

------
ddillon
Given the message in the article, I find it interesting they use Google
Analytics on their site still.

------
ggggtez
Clicked expecting some bug, just found a person who doesn't know how to turn
location off. Meh.

------
Mizza
Google are a deeply, deeply unethical company and all of their employees are
complicit.

On a more practical note, I live in apartment above a restaurant. My phone now
asks me to review this restaurant every time I come home and wants me to post
photos I take in my apartment to the restaurant's map page.

Now that OSM data is as good as Google and Maps.Me is a good enough client, my
next phone will be completely de-Googled.

~~~
ovao
Why did you purchase a phone with an OS provided by what you believe to be a
deeply unethical company?

~~~
amelius
Lack of affordable options?

My banking app supports only two platforms, one of which is too expensive, and
the other is made by Google.

~~~
Chaebixi
Also Android is a more open platform. I can't reasonably side-load personal
apps in iOS.

------
nerflad
Just turn off location services on the phone unless you really need them.

~~~
refurb
Turn it off in your Google account, not your phone (unless that's what you
meant).

I turned it off years ago and when I read an article that says "click on this
link to see how google tracks you!" I see nothing.

~~~
nerflad
Turning off location history in your account settings is also important, but
turning off location services on your phone will prevent the messages from
appearing (since Google will, in theory, not have your location readily
available).

------
babesh
When you realize you are a battery in the Matrix... and then you realize it is
a symbiotic relationship.

------
Voivode_irb
His complaint seems to be directed more to the interface than the
infrastructure. IIRC you have to do a fair bit of signing up for things to get
these creepy messages. My question would be, if the invasive interruptions
sounded less creepy would he still have a problem with them?

------
bhhaskin
There are things you can do to help fight this. Donate some time or money to
the Ubuntu Phone project. It isn't maintained by canonical anymore, but it is
far from dead. More choices and options are what we need now. It is insane
that there are basically two OS you can do.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Purism's Librem 5 would be a better effort at this point.

------
mhb
See also - Quayside - Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs redevelopment effort:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16181331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16181331)

------
mankash666
Concur completely. The practical alternative - an iPhone, is worse in other
ways. In the history of general purpose computing, never ever has a company
sold hardware to the customer transferring ownership rights to the customer,
and then locked the device up to apps approved by the hardware manufacturer,
going as far as taking a 30% cut. How this is flying past regulators is
anyone's guess, and as more time progresses, people will begin to think that
running apps on hardware they own is a privilege, not a right. Ludicrous!!

So, the choice between an ever spying phone and one that you cannot
run/publish apps of your choosing is a hard one. However, with the right
configuration, Android can be made a lot less intrusive, retaining the ability
to run the apps of your choosing

~~~
rpowers
Not a hard decision at all. There are very few apps you cannot already
purchase for the iPhone or cannot write yourself with a free developer
profile.

~~~
mankash666
"cannot write yourself with a free developer profile" \--> THIS is complete
disconnect with the potential end user, unless the app is for iPhone
developers.

The world is comprised of 99.9999999999999999999% non iOS developers

------
MikeGale
It's your choice. If you don't like the "surveillance capitalism" of Google,
don't get their devices, fix your DNS etc. to not be able to contact them,
etc.

------
abiox
i don't mind google's data collection. the ergonomics of user-interaction can
be a bit annoying.

that said, assuming we're safe and private because we turn stuff off, or opt
out of things, just seems silly. the nsa (or whichever agency) just invokes
'something something national security' and they can track you just the same,
and google (or your carrier, or various other intermediaries) can't even tell
you about it.

------
eleitl
Use good Android forks like CopperheadOS sans Gapps.

------
GCU-Empiricist
I generally prefer android to iOS because it's easier to work with as a dev,
but this has been making me think about converting back.

~~~
doktrin
I haven't owned an iPhone in over 5 years, and I feel the same way. No company
should be romanticized, and I'm sure Apple's (very public) decision to take
user privacy seriously can be viewed cynically - but at the end of the day
that's the kind of stuff I care about as a consumer, and will choose my next
phone accordingly.

~~~
niklasrde
As an N.B. - developing and using for iPhone/iPad, hell even Apple TV has
become so much nicer in the past 5 years. I can't remember the last time I've
used DFU mode. Signing Certs are still annoying in XCode, but day-to-day it's
a lot better than what it once was.

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
Do you still need an up to date mac to do it (even a hackentosh) or can you
develop from outside their environment?

------
rm_-rf_slash
Unable to connect to the server (and got a 500 error minutes ago) as of
12:17PM EST. Anybody else seeing this?

Edit: Now it’s working. 12:20

~~~
fixermark
It's probably getting bandwidth-hammered.

------
VyseofArcadia
Off topic, but scroll to the very bottom of the linked page and mouseover all
of the little circles.

I like that. That's slick.

------
hn2017
I just hate these non-descriptive titles, regardless of the content. But maybe
that's just me.

------
alinspired
at least for now these notifications can be disabled

------
teded32
Noodlehead is pretty good though, right?

------
hi41
I owned Google Pixel last year. I found the constant pestering from Google
Maps to upload more photos very annoying. I returned after a while.

I sent the following issues to Google customer service and returned the
device. I am putting that here with a sense of respect to both Google and hn
community. Some of it is dated.

I am very unhappy with the Pixel purchase. It is not worth the price. I am an
iPhone user who switched to Pixel after seeing the Pixel event. I am also a
Google fan but I found the experience with Pixel jarring. Below is my
experience so far. I am going to return the Pixel and go back to my old iPhone
5s.

1\. My experience with music on Android I did not like Google Play Music app
because the free version meant having to put up with ads. Also I did not like
to use data to play the songs I already owned. So I downloaded the songs on
Google Play Music. But I did not like the Google Play Music app interface. So
I read reviews of the best music player and bought Neutron and Poweramp. But
both music apps were not able to use the music which Google Play Music
downloaded. So I spent an hour to find ways to move music from my pc to Pixel
and did it with windows media player. Now I started using Neutron and I chose
the automatic option to find music and it started played Podcast files which
is not what I expected (I had bought Pocket cast and downloaded some podcasts
earlier). Then I used Poweramp. But what I noticed was a bug in Android OS.
When I connected the 3.5 mm audio jack and disconnected a call I was on, both
Neutron and Poweramp started playing! Shouldn't Android OS allow only one
player to play music. Isn't that the most basic test case! So playing music on
Android was a bad experience. When I close the app the music was still
playing. The app was sitting in the notification area and still running. I
wanted to stop playing music when I closed the app. Why doesn't Google make a
decent default music player for Android? And why does the music start playing
when I connect the 3.5 mm cable. I may not want to hear music but may want to
listen to a podcast. The music experience has been horrible on the Pixel.

2\. Using Google Assistant to make a conference call I pressed and held the
middle button and said "call Jack". It brought up a list of numbers and chose
one and the call failed. This is a conference call number. The contacts has a
comma in between two numbers. Comma is used for a pause. Google Assistant
dropped the comma and dialed the number and the call failed. Because of this
bug in Google Assistant I can't use it to make a call to a conference all.

3\. Podcasts I bought Pocket Cast but on the locked screen I don't see the 10
second rewind and forward buttons. I only see the back and next buttons. Whey
can't I see the 10 second rewind and forward buttons? Why do I have to unlock
the phone to access those two buttons? It is irritating to hear 30 minutes of
the podcast only to press the back button and be put in the beginning of the
podcast.

4\. iTablaPro Android does not have a decent alternative to iOS' iTablePro
app. The swar systems app is not that good. For certain user compaints on the
Google Play store, the developer asks the customer to go to a certain folder
and delete files. Why expose a customer to such intricate technical issues.
Also there are certain issues that happen on other models that is related to
timing. Generally I notice that the quality of apps is not good compared to
iOS.

5\. The back button Using the back button is confusing. Sometimes instead of
taking me to the previous screen, the app takes me to the home screen. Why?

6\. No headphones I paid $750. So why doesn't Pixel come with a headset?

7\. Video editing I found it hard to trim and cut videos. I did not find a
default android app to edit and trim videos.

8\. Music snycing If I delete a song how do it sync it so that it deletes on
my pc as well? Why isn't Google making a good music sync program.

9\. Local search results on the phone does not include the music files on the
phone. Why?

10\. When I turn on my Bluetooth headset the music plays on it instead of the
3.5 mm jack. I don't see any easy way to choose 3.5 mm jack for songs and take
calls using my bluetooth headset.

In all I am not happy with the price I paid for Pixel and the Android os and
apps seem to work poorly. Android is poorly designed without paying care to
the needs of the customer. I am deeply dissatisfied. It hurts me to say it
because I am a big fan of Google as a company and like many of its services.

------
Zhenya
OP is freaked that the data that was shared with Google is used to help Google
get a bigger dataset...

Get a grip.

Edit: Downvotes now rolling in. I'd love to know why. Is this a bug? Is Google
doing something wrong? Or did OP hand over the data and not bother to go
through the settings to turn off things they didn't like .

~~~
excalibur
> Or did OP hand over the data and not bother to go through the settings to
> turn off things they didn't like

OP is making the case that they shouldn't have to. That a personal device they
purchased outright should be secure by default.

~~~
Zhenya
It's secure. The data is only going to Google. OP agreed to that when he
logged into the device with their Google account not when they bought the
device.

Also: security != privacy

~~~
fenwick67
Yeah I think the word they meant to use was "private".

Having a user check a box to agree to this along with a million other things
is definitely legal (which I guess is your point?), but it's less than ideal
for users.

Consumers buy a phone with the anticipation of being able to watch Netflix and
Hulu and send text messages (insert other use cases here), then pay $600 for
it, then they are stopped with a "oh by the way if you want all of these apps
you need to tell us where you are all the time". It's legally fine but that
doesn't make it non-evil.

------
antiphase
I can only assume this guy wears The Breeches Of Trust

------
thebiglebrewski
Oh man this is what I hate the most about my Pixel. How can I turn it off?

~~~
netinstructions
Press and hold on the notification itself. Alternatively, press and hold on
the notification and start to slide left/right (still holding) to reveal a
gears icon. It should be a shortcut that takes you to the notification
settings for that app with the option to toggle them on/off.

~~~
thebiglebrewski
Thanks!

------
innagadadavida
Site is down, as ironic as it might sound, here is the Google Cache of it:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bradfro...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bradfrost.com/blog/post/google-
you-creepy-sonofabitch/)

------
gthtjtkt
It feels like Google has a team dedicated to finding new and idiotic ways to
make Android more annoying.

The most recent annoyance I experienced was the "Welcome to [State]"
announcement every time you're using Google Maps navigation and you cross a
state line. Really, Google? You had to interrupt my music for that?

~~~
Djvacto
I can't imagine you're crossing multiple state lines in a short enough time
that this is any more annoying than google maps navigation instructions.

Things like that aren't universally liked or dis-liked, but I can see that for
you it was way more annoying than it is for me.

Have you checked if you can turn it off?

~~~
gthtjtkt
> I can't imagine

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-
state_area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-state_area)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_State_Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_State_Area)

I searched and found no way to disable it at the time. I don't re-do that
search on a regular basis so I can't say if that's changed since then.

And no single annoyance is a huge issue, but when you view this in the larger
context of Android's cacophony of distracting annoyances it starts to become
mildly infuriating. Everything you do, Android seems to have some way of
pestering you about it. Your phone starts to feel like a telemarketer in your
pocket.

