
Google in, Google out - imartin2k
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/21/google-in-google-out/
======
buro9
> They don’t just want to remake the world in their image. They want to remake
> our individual lives. Each Stack — bar Facebook, for now — offers the same
> awkward bargain: _commit wholly & wholeheartedly to our ecosystem, and we
> will better your life._

And it just might work, if any of the newer Google experiences worked on all
Google accounts.

My experience as a Google Apps / G Suite user, is that few to none of the
newer Google products and features are either available or offer anything more
than a basic and perfunctory service.

"One account, all of Google", not if the account isn't a Gmail account.

It's the biggest thing that is broken at Google, and it's broken in every
product department, every team, every feature.

It's also why I haven't purchased a Pixel (why? When much of the benefit I'm
denied access to, I cannot even ask Google Assistant for my agenda), and I
haven't purchased a Home (why? When again it is limited and locked down), and
my Android TV seems to lack integration with Photos (which I assume is because
of my G Suite account but maybe it's just crappy).

Google accounts seem to be driving towards 2 very different and polarised
futures, a personal one and a professional one. Having only professional
accounts means that all of the personal features are unavailable.

~~~
m12k
I'm developing a web app that can be installed via the G Suite Marketplace.
They also have an 'Integrate with Google' button that we can put on our
website so users can just install/grant permissions from there - sounds great
- in principle. Except the users don't have any way of choosing which account
it uses. So if they happened to log into their personal Gmail account before
their work G Suite account, well, then they're just shit out of luck and can't
install. I asked about a fix (e.g. a 'select account' box like you get when
logging in) on StackOverflow and filed a report on their developer support
site - of course, this being Google, there's been no answer more than a month
later, and I doubt there ever will be...

Anyways, in the meantime, the only thing we can do is pretend that button
doesn't exist and instead direct users to the marketplace to install. Except,
since our app is only installable by G Suite admins, if you happened to log
into your personal Gmail account first, our listing is not even visible...

Google's whole account situation is a dumpster fire - and don't even get me
started on the APIs they have on G Suite, that seem to have grown organically
out of an 'admins would like to script a bit with the data'-use case and only
added 3rd party apps as an afterthought. I wonder if the G Suite team is just
chronically understaffed and underfunded or if they just don't realize how
broken the whole thing is.

~~~
thesuitonym
>filed a report on their developer support site - of course, this being
Google, there's been no answer more than a month later, and I doubt there ever
will be...

Don't lose hope, we filed a similar request and then forgot about it. Several
months later, we got a response and the issue has now been resolved. Good
luck!

------
MrQuincle
> And yet. Like every I/O attendee I received a free Google Home device as
> part of the I/O experience. (I attended as an engineer, not as press.) But I
> don’t want one; I’ll be giving mine away. Sorry, Google. It’s not that I
> mistrust you. It’s just that I don’t want to have to trust any profit-driven
> megacorporation quite that much. Not Apple, not Amazon, and not even you.

It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine,
while others are not.

Almost everybody carries one of both in their pockets or in their purse.
However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic
into a speaker is not okay for this guy, but consumer satisfaction is quite
high for these devices. I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as
well.

If it's about babies or security (door bells) it is also fine.

Augmented stuff on your phone seems a necessary predecessor before Google
glass can come out for people like this.

It's some kind of anti-sensor attitude that seems to erode over time. I don't
think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on
that thing!?

~~~
pacala
Always on cameras, always on mics, that's a new low even for Google.
Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud, but who in
his right mind is trusting Google on privacy anymore? From Google Maps the
other day "New! share your location with your friends for an hour". Oh, by the
way, give Google Maps permission to always track your location, forever. Wtf.

Camera and microphone on the mobile phone activate when I press the button to
activate them. Furthermore, the photos and sound are ostensibly owned by me.
Pics go to icloud, voice goes to the people I talk to. Not to a corporation
that built a global web specifically designed to suck up every bit of personal
information that they can possibly suck. "To provide me a better service",
haha.

Mics and cams are OK in cars, because the car is not connected to the
Internet. The data stays in the car. Baby monitors are OK, because they are
not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the house. Notice a pattern
there?

~~~
thesuitonym
>Camera and microphone on the mobile phone activate when I press the button to
activate them.

Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for just a moment and remind you that,
should Google want to, they could just turn on your microphone and camera
without letting you know. _Would_ they? Probably not, but they certainly
could, and unless you're in the habit of regularly checking your network
traffic, you wouldn't know.

~~~
maccard
Not if you don't use Android.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes if you use Android, and in particular yes if you've given an app camera
access.

Proof: my phone (unrooted, OEM Android) can shoot photos whenever I want it
to, even if it stays locked, without anyone noticing. It's a trivial Tasker
job I set up myself (think e.g. shooting rear-camera selfies using your
smartwatch), but it nicely demonstrates that any app with camera privileges
could do that too.

~~~
maccard
I said if you _dont_ use android

~~~
TeMPOraL
Right. That's what happens when I comment just before going to bed. :/.

------
andrenotgiant
The thing that scares me the most about all the data I give to Google is not
that I am putting lots of trust in present-Google. It's that I am also putting
lots of trust in FUTURE-Google.

So far, history has shown that even the most dominant tech companies can see
their power wane.

Imagine you are a VP at Google, and after a year of revenue shrinkage you are
being pressured to get "creative" about new sources of revenue... You have
everyone's ENTIRE history of data. At one point the "need for revenue" will
outweigh the "desire to respect people's privacy."

~~~
Veratyr
That "desire to respect people's privacy" isn't just some form of benevolent
corporate altruism though, it's also a legal agreement between Google and its
users and something that's closely watched by regulators around the world.

It's hard to see because in America there are basically no laws regarding
privacy but around Europe in particular, regulators have power and use it. See
the "right to be forgotten" laws which were forced on Google as an example.

That's not to say that Google can't do things with your data later but it will
need your consent and regulators will be paying close attention.

~~~
andrenotgiant
That's a good point, I have zero understanding of how privacy laws and
Google's own TOS limit what they can do with old data.

To clarify, though, I'm not talking about Google straight-up selling my data,
I'm talking about all the creepy in-between things like:

\- parsing out the fees I pay from my financial transaction emails and selling
me in an "audience" to competing banks.

\- Parsing my e-commerce Return confirmations and selling it as an "ecommerce
credit score" to ecommerce sites.

\- Monitoring brand mentions on Google Home and selling me in an audience to
advertisers.

\- Selling my contact information to sites I thought I was just browsing
"anonymously"

------
hagakure0c
What we need more of is something like the General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679). Right now, Google, Facebook et al are
luring their users deeper and deeper into their ecosystem by promising them a
better future, which will never happen, the only thing that is happening are
consumers handing over more of their personal data hoping tech will make good
on that promise.

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

~~~
Sargos
Your premise is flawed. My future is already better than when I started using
Google. It promised me a better future and I have _already_ received the
benefit and there are many, many more benefits coming in the future. I no
longer have to buy and maintain my own hardware for my files. I don't have to
worry about losing my precious photos in a fire. I have found better
restaurants by allowing my preferences to be known.

So they are not just gathering data and providing hope. There are tangible
benefits today.

~~~
hagakure0c
Sure, my concern are all the bad things that will happen when all collected
data ends up in the hands of a future totalitarian state. Do you know if there
is a kill switch in place ?

[https://www.wired.com/2017/05/googles-perfect-future-will-
al...](https://www.wired.com/2017/05/googles-perfect-future-will-always-just-
around-corner/)

------
paradite
On the topic of Google Lens, I don't really understand the hype around it.

People are talking about how it is able scan a bar code of SSID and password
to connect to router. Isn't that ancient technology? And for other uses like
overlay maps info, aren't those just running standard CV/ML algorithms on
their mega-servers plus simple integration with other apps in their ecosystem?

~~~
jaflo
I think it is that simple integration that makes or breaks the product.
Because Google controls the OS, it allows for a more seamless experience: you
wouldn't download an app just to scan and connect to Wi-Fi networks, but
because it's a feature built into your phone you are much more likely to use
it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
If only they did that. One of the things that annoys me the most about modern
smartphones is that every single feature has a separated, isolated app for it
(usually each from a different vendor), and none of those apps properly
integrate with one another. The more they can integrate at OS level, the
better for the user experience (though I'm not having high hopes - Google has
a long history of dumbing down applications to the point of making them barely
useful for anything).

------
mwexler
It is interesting that of the 5, Microsoft is still in the mix. Look back 10
years, or 20 years, and ask which companies you would have thought would also
be present. MS may have made the list, but wouldn't a lot of others as well?

Apple is also surprising, but then again, that's what they were so good at.
You expect someone to come out of nowhere, but MS just keeps on chugging when
so many others failed out.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Microsoft's scale and early dominance gives them incredible staying power.
Apple, at this point, too. Huge companies have the money to coast by in
mediocrity for years, and can simply buy assets to fill in gaps in their
product line.

Don't have a chat app? Buy one. Don't have machine learning yet? Buy a couple
of those too.

Even if a company like Google lost most of it's income overnight, it could
coast for years on pure cash reserves. The amount of money these big tech
behemoths have to work with is incredible. As long as they strike gold once or
twice every several years, they'll be fine.

~~~
scholia
_> Huge companies have the money to coast by in mediocrity for years, and can
simply buy assets to fill in gaps in their product line._

True, though IBM may now have spent too long coasting by in mediocrity...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I don't know, Watson is actually one of the most publicly-recognized names in
the AI game. If they leverage that correctly, there's a lot of opportunities
there.

Especially since most people who want to use AI would view Google as a
competitor because of the number of services it operates, and IBM is more
likely to support someone's desire for on-premises solutions. (The on-site
enterprise solutions Google had for search and Earth, for comparison, have
been recently discontinued.)

~~~
scholia
Watson is actually the most heavily-advertized name in the AI game. It's
invisible in IBM's financial results, which have now shown declines in
turnover for 20 quarters in a row.

------
pascalxus
The author seems really concerned with privacy and surveillance. I'm no expert
on the subject.

But, why all the concern? He said they're working really hard to keep that
stuff private. Are there legal risks here? Will the government come after you
if you say the wrong thing? I don't really get it.

I think the biggest security risk is just your email, if hackers get into
that: that's where all the potentially financially devastating information is.

------
NKCSS
There used to be a video called "Google Grid" that talked about a future where
everything was Google. It was pretty cool, about 5-10-ish years old I think?
But I can't find it anywhere.

~~~
alvarosevilla95
This one by any chance?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s)

------
huhtenberg
Is this guy quoting his own tweets in the article?

~~~
boramalper
…and what is wrong with referring to what you have said before?

