And another shitty thing is that I can't tell them to omit certain websites from my search results, while at the same time they insist they need my information "to improve my experience".
This is exactly it. There's nothing personalised about Google search results. It doesn't show what I want to see, it shows what they want to show me.
I'd like a search engine where I have some input on the ranking of sites shown to me. Some sites are crap and I never want to see them, other sites are ranked low but often have info I'm interested in.
Even just let me vote my search results up or down on relevance. I can vote on everything else, why not this? (Though ideally, I'd love to be able to devise my own algorithm for these things.)
My theory is that such a feature would take away too much power from Google being able to control the "sorting" of the search results and it would pull away the veil of what they really do (or don't do). I think the bulk of the common search queries and information on the web (that isn't exotic and super-unique) is accumulated at any one point by a handful of websites (think 100-1000-10000?).
It's highly conceivable that one could get a completely novel and diverse web and search experience if we were to exclude those concentrated websites entirely from search results. At that point, google can no longer slide on just showing the top results from a tiny subset of their index, and would be forced to always show results from the entire index. As opposed to now where 99.9% of the time, they mostly show you results from that smaller subset and 0.1% of the time show you the rest (that is of course only if you have a super-specific query or you force them with some of their remaining search modifiers).
I worked around that by briefly enabling history, setting the Home address and then immediately turning history back off. Obviously not ideal but it solved the problem for me.
What data? The location history feature in only on briefly while you are setting your Home location and once you turn it off again it stops collecting it. You also can go into your Google account and verify what information (if any) was collected in that window and delete it if you really feel that strongly about it.
This is really just Google using hostile UX to badger people into enabling location history and (in their eyes - hopefully) leaving it on.
It might still be processed in aggregate, but they stop associating years of precise locations to your account.
I’d be surprised if they don’t follow that wish just for PR and legal reasons alone. The fewest people will actually opt out or if they do accidentally opt back in since the “enable web and location data” action appears anywhere from Maps to Google Home setup.
I want to tell Google where I live so I can say "ok Google, navigate home" and get directions home without having to touch my phone. If there's a phrase that gets hands-free directions for starred items without having to say the whole address, Google doesn't make that easy to figure out.
Everyone who uses their phone while driving thinks they're one of the few who can do it safely, whether they're fully engrossed in a text conversation speeding down the freeway, or tapping an icon while stopped at a traffic light. Deep down, I think that too. That's why I can't give myself excuses to do it.
Home and work are very "special" cases in that it's someplace most people regularly go to and from. So the app sends you personalized driving alerts/reminders, traffic updates, etc. There are definitely reasons for it, it's just not worth it to some. Others just have no idea that some of these nice goodies are helpful and not eerie and "privacy invading". So what if Google knows where I live and work? Frankly, that's something the government should know anyways, and it's failing abysmally judging by the amount of crime it's missing.
