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Because you're dialing a phone. Nowhere does that require Google's involvement. The search feature should not be any more than an optional point of integration

by tomc1985 10y ago

Because you're dialing a phone. Nowhere does that require Google's involvement. The search feature should not be any more than an optional point of integration. Is nothing sacred anymore?

notatoad 10y ago
It doesn't require it, but Google makes it better. If you're just looking to make your life easier and not paranoid, there's no downside to having google in your dialer. and no, i'm pretty sure there's nothing "sacred" about your phone.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  This is exactly the problem with technology. Asshole companies have to productify everything. It's not about being paranoid, it's about operational simplicity. Dialing a phone is dialing a phone; not everyone wants Google to think for them The act of punching in a number should not require any outside services or assistance or requirements. If there are value-added components to add then they can manifest as modular extras or in another part of the device. This is a violation of user expectations and runs contrary to 75+ years of muscle memory. (And to add... dialing a phone should be a core, fundamental, and inviable aspect of smartPHONE and its OS, not something OEMs can swap out) Watching technology companies supplant (erm, "disrupt") established and proven tech with their crap is extremely depressing. We had nice things, and then we threw them away because we are stupid and lazy. Why do "technologists" ruin everything? "Smart" my ass.
  - chickenbane 10y ago
    > This is exactly the problem with technology. This is YOUR problem with the technology. Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do. They like that the dialer provides fancy stuff like visual voicemail, automatic transcription, phone-number-to-business-name mapping, etc. Most people don't care about trying to avoid Google Services, in fact most people don't use smart phones as phones. In a way, luddites that hate techologists have it nice. You can use an old flip phone that is just a phone and that thing will last forever! It's use assholes who need to keep charging them every day.
    - tomc1985 10y ago
      > Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. If only because the same companies are training users to require all these extras, by effectively (and mostly inadvertently) erasing past knowledge. I'm sure Google would love it if their engineers could remove dialing entirely, what number could you possibly want to call that's not listed in Google somewhere? A lot of those same muggles were/are fine before these services came along and many likely want it to stay the same. > They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do. Ha! You're funny. Look at one process I'm sure most of us are familiar with: getting a cute girl's (or guy's) phone number. With flip phones this was simple- pull up the dialer, punch in the number, hit save instead of dial, done (or just dial and save later). No waiting, no fuss. Now with my smartphone that same process is: * key in my passcode / fingerprint / whatever * wait for UI to animate, notifications to process, and for the OS to catch up (cause powersave is now off). 3-10 seconds on average of awkwardly staring at the screen and apologizing for the phone's slowness * hit phone icon, wait another second for my touch to register than another 5-20 seconds for phone app to start * enter number, hit Add To Contacts, meanwhile all inputs are lagging about a half second behind my actions. Wait for contact screen to appear (another 3-10 seconds) * enter her name, maybe snap a photo (about the only real value-add in this process), hit Save, again waiting half a second or so for UI lag after each touch If going out with a flip phone didn't make one such a large target socially you can be sure more would be rockin' it.
      - derefr 10y ago
        A lot of these people were fine before smartphones themselves came along. A lot of people were fine before phones. A lot of people were fine before agriculture or stone tools. Does that mean much?
        tomc1985 10y ago
        It does when the replacements make life appreciably worse or more complicated, and it matters even more when the old ways are deprecated, made unfashionable, or just flat-out unavailable. Look at John Deere.... we went from "software on tractors" to what is shaping up to look like a massive battle over intellectual property rights. Those new Deere tractors are superior in almost every appreciable way and yet we have another case of the OEM inserting themselves way too far into something that they do not belong in. Are farmers luddites for rejecting Deere's bullshit?
  - derefr 10y ago
    We're not just talking about dialing a phone; we're talking about a Phone app. Which is—besides being a dialer—also a call history list, and a notification UI that appears when you receive a call to let you decide whether to accept it or not. Both of those use-cases benefit far more from looking up numbers than dialing does. As it is, if I'm sitting at my desk with my iPhone and get a call from a number I don't recognize, I literally take a second to Google the numbers on my laptop before accepting the call on my phone. I wish iOS (or any VoIP app for iOS; I use Bria) had this integration, optional or not.
    - sirn 10y ago
      iOS do have this integration in the form of Caller Identification. An app can provide a caller information to the Phone app (I believe in a form of a database, rather than sending each call to remote server) and it will show up in the caller screen. Any VoIP app that integrate with CallKit will automatically get this functionality as well. Whoscall is one example and is pretty popular in Asia.
      - derefr 10y ago
        Huh, neat. I guess I never really thought about how large phone storage has gotten. (A thought—if they're doing this all-locally, then they don't technically even need a separate API: phone number databases could just act as Contacts sources, with each virtual contact containing a field denoting "not actually someone I know, just someone who is calling me" so they won't show up in the Contacts app.)
  - PeterisP 10y ago
    "Dialing" a phone is niche functionality that most people don't use anymore - generally, people don't know phone numbers anymore, they don't really see them, and they definitely don't use them, they just tap on a name or face in their contact list. A phone number is an identifier that you use once when obtaining a contact (or it gets shared by someone, so you don't enter it even that one time). If a phone actually required you to dial a number, for many people it wouldn't be usable as a phone to call their friends. This means that integration with wherever users have stored their contracts (and right not it's generally one of the cloud services) is a key component of the dialer app, possibly the main one - a contact app without phone features can be used to communicate with everyone (using the multitude of VOIP services available, skype calls or whatever) but a dialer without contacts isn't sufficient for communication.
    - tomc1985 10y ago
      Not so sure about this... just yesterday I got stuck behind a freight forwarding truck that was labelled with only the company name, a list of destination ports, and a phone number. Lawyers, doctors, and bail-bondsmen still advertise via their phone number. Entire generations still go to phone numbers as their primary means of reaching someone remotely.
      - PeterisP 10y ago
        Yes, this is the (rare) use case for the first call you make to a stranger. If you have a pre-existing relationship with a particular lawyer or doctor, you tap on their name or face in the contacts app. Like, thinking about this I understood that don't know the phone number of my wife. I (probably?) have it written down somewhere outside my phone, I had known it by heart many years ago, but life was different back then, and as far as I recall it may be that I have not used it in any meaningful way for more than full ten years. I recall that I have given her phone number to others on some occasions, but it involved sending a contact - possibly the number was displayed at the screen during that process, but neither I nor the receiver really read it, and it that way even before smartphones were a thing and sharing a contact happened over SMS.
- Bud 10y ago
  No. Google does not "make it better". And no. It's not "paranoid" to want to dial your phone without onerous terms of service. And yes. There is something sacred about our phones and their privacy. It's 2017. Without privacy on your mobile device, you effectively have no privacy at all. I'm not sure your comment could have a higher degree of wrongness. Every single part of it is wrong.
tiglionabbit 10y ago
It needs to access your contact book at contacts.google.com.
mverwijs 10y ago
Unfortunatly, that is not the case. Running cyanogenmod here, stock dialer. Open up the dialer. Go to settings. Oh, look: "phone number lookup". I wonder what that could be. Hmmm. Click. What is that? "Forward lookup - Show nearby places when searching in the dialer". Ticked on by default. "People lookup"? On by default. Reverse lookup? On by default. Default lookup provider? Google. By default, it looms like the standard dialer app in android sends every call made or received to Google.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  All of the above is Google value-add. None of that is necessary. Also, none of those options appear on my phone in the dialer settings (Android 6, Motorola phone), so either they've been moved or we're looking at different software. (Per another comment, likely I'm using the AOSP dialer, which thankfully lacks those "features")
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I hate how when you add a Google account, it auotmagically autosyncs. I have to disable sync for Calendar/Contacts/Everything, install Contact Delete, remove all my contacts, then install DavDroid off F-Droid and connect to my Radicale server. This keeps some of my information away from Google. No normal person will go through this process.
nebabyte 10y ago
If you live in a world of "should be"s, it would be safest for you to assume that nothing was ever sacred, no. There were just opportunities being passed up or that weren't feasible until now.

Because you're dialing a phone. Nowhere does that require Google's involvement. The search feature should not be any more than an optional point of integration. Is nothing sacred anymore?

notatoad 10y ago

It doesn't require it, but Google makes it better. If you're just looking to make your life easier and not paranoid, there's no downside to having google in your dialer. and no, i'm pretty sure there's nothing "sacred" about your phone.

tomc1985 10y ago
This is exactly the problem with technology. Asshole companies have to productify everything. It's not about being paranoid, it's about operational simplicity. Dialing a phone is dialing a phone; not everyone wants Google to think for them The act of punching in a number should not require any outside services or assistance or requirements. If there are value-added components to add then they can manifest as modular extras or in another part of the device. This is a violation of user expectations and runs contrary to 75+ years of muscle memory. (And to add... dialing a phone should be a core, fundamental, and inviable aspect of smartPHONE and its OS, not something OEMs can swap out) Watching technology companies supplant (erm, "disrupt") established and proven tech with their crap is extremely depressing. We had nice things, and then we threw them away because we are stupid and lazy. Why do "technologists" ruin everything? "Smart" my ass.
- chickenbane 10y ago
  > This is exactly the problem with technology. This is YOUR problem with the technology. Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do. They like that the dialer provides fancy stuff like visual voicemail, automatic transcription, phone-number-to-business-name mapping, etc. Most people don't care about trying to avoid Google Services, in fact most people don't use smart phones as phones. In a way, luddites that hate techologists have it nice. You can use an old flip phone that is just a phone and that thing will last forever! It's use assholes who need to keep charging them every day.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    > Normal muggles care for none of this conversation. If only because the same companies are training users to require all these extras, by effectively (and mostly inadvertently) erasing past knowledge. I'm sure Google would love it if their engineers could remove dialing entirely, what number could you possibly want to call that's not listed in Google somewhere? A lot of those same muggles were/are fine before these services came along and many likely want it to stay the same. > They want something that works, which is what modern smartphones do. Ha! You're funny. Look at one process I'm sure most of us are familiar with: getting a cute girl's (or guy's) phone number. With flip phones this was simple- pull up the dialer, punch in the number, hit save instead of dial, done (or just dial and save later). No waiting, no fuss. Now with my smartphone that same process is: * key in my passcode / fingerprint / whatever * wait for UI to animate, notifications to process, and for the OS to catch up (cause powersave is now off). 3-10 seconds on average of awkwardly staring at the screen and apologizing for the phone's slowness * hit phone icon, wait another second for my touch to register than another 5-20 seconds for phone app to start * enter number, hit Add To Contacts, meanwhile all inputs are lagging about a half second behind my actions. Wait for contact screen to appear (another 3-10 seconds) * enter her name, maybe snap a photo (about the only real value-add in this process), hit Save, again waiting half a second or so for UI lag after each touch If going out with a flip phone didn't make one such a large target socially you can be sure more would be rockin' it.
    - derefr 10y ago
      A lot of these people were fine before smartphones themselves came along. A lot of people were fine before phones. A lot of people were fine before agriculture or stone tools. Does that mean much?
      - tomc1985 10y ago
        It does when the replacements make life appreciably worse or more complicated, and it matters even more when the old ways are deprecated, made unfashionable, or just flat-out unavailable. Look at John Deere.... we went from "software on tractors" to what is shaping up to look like a massive battle over intellectual property rights. Those new Deere tractors are superior in almost every appreciable way and yet we have another case of the OEM inserting themselves way too far into something that they do not belong in. Are farmers luddites for rejecting Deere's bullshit?
- derefr 10y ago
  We're not just talking about dialing a phone; we're talking about a Phone app. Which is—besides being a dialer—also a call history list, and a notification UI that appears when you receive a call to let you decide whether to accept it or not. Both of those use-cases benefit far more from looking up numbers than dialing does. As it is, if I'm sitting at my desk with my iPhone and get a call from a number I don't recognize, I literally take a second to Google the numbers on my laptop before accepting the call on my phone. I wish iOS (or any VoIP app for iOS; I use Bria) had this integration, optional or not.
  - sirn 10y ago
    iOS do have this integration in the form of Caller Identification. An app can provide a caller information to the Phone app (I believe in a form of a database, rather than sending each call to remote server) and it will show up in the caller screen. Any VoIP app that integrate with CallKit will automatically get this functionality as well. Whoscall is one example and is pretty popular in Asia.
    - derefr 10y ago
      Huh, neat. I guess I never really thought about how large phone storage has gotten. (A thought—if they're doing this all-locally, then they don't technically even need a separate API: phone number databases could just act as Contacts sources, with each virtual contact containing a field denoting "not actually someone I know, just someone who is calling me" so they won't show up in the Contacts app.)
- PeterisP 10y ago
  "Dialing" a phone is niche functionality that most people don't use anymore - generally, people don't know phone numbers anymore, they don't really see them, and they definitely don't use them, they just tap on a name or face in their contact list. A phone number is an identifier that you use once when obtaining a contact (or it gets shared by someone, so you don't enter it even that one time). If a phone actually required you to dial a number, for many people it wouldn't be usable as a phone to call their friends. This means that integration with wherever users have stored their contracts (and right not it's generally one of the cloud services) is a key component of the dialer app, possibly the main one - a contact app without phone features can be used to communicate with everyone (using the multitude of VOIP services available, skype calls or whatever) but a dialer without contacts isn't sufficient for communication.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    Not so sure about this... just yesterday I got stuck behind a freight forwarding truck that was labelled with only the company name, a list of destination ports, and a phone number. Lawyers, doctors, and bail-bondsmen still advertise via their phone number. Entire generations still go to phone numbers as their primary means of reaching someone remotely.
    - PeterisP 10y ago
      Yes, this is the (rare) use case for the first call you make to a stranger. If you have a pre-existing relationship with a particular lawyer or doctor, you tap on their name or face in the contacts app. Like, thinking about this I understood that don't know the phone number of my wife. I (probably?) have it written down somewhere outside my phone, I had known it by heart many years ago, but life was different back then, and as far as I recall it may be that I have not used it in any meaningful way for more than full ten years. I recall that I have given her phone number to others on some occasions, but it involved sending a contact - possibly the number was displayed at the screen during that process, but neither I nor the receiver really read it, and it that way even before smartphones were a thing and sharing a contact happened over SMS.
Bud 10y ago
No. Google does not "make it better". And no. It's not "paranoid" to want to dial your phone without onerous terms of service. And yes. There is something sacred about our phones and their privacy. It's 2017. Without privacy on your mobile device, you effectively have no privacy at all. I'm not sure your comment could have a higher degree of wrongness. Every single part of it is wrong.

tiglionabbit 10y ago

It needs to access your contact book at contacts.google.com.

mverwijs 10y ago

Unfortunatly, that is not the case. Running cyanogenmod here, stock dialer. Open up the dialer. Go to settings. Oh, look: "phone number lookup". I wonder what that could be. Hmmm. Click. What is that? "Forward lookup - Show nearby places when searching in the dialer". Ticked on by default. "People lookup"? On by default. Reverse lookup? On by default. Default lookup provider? Google. By default, it looms like the standard dialer app in android sends every call made or received to Google.

tomc1985 10y ago
All of the above is Google value-add. None of that is necessary. Also, none of those options appear on my phone in the dialer settings (Android 6, Motorola phone), so either they've been moved or we're looking at different software. (Per another comment, likely I'm using the AOSP dialer, which thankfully lacks those "features")
djsumdog 10y ago
I hate how when you add a Google account, it auotmagically autosyncs. I have to disable sync for Calendar/Contacts/Everything, install Contact Delete, remove all my contacts, then install DavDroid off F-Droid and connect to my Radicale server. This keeps some of my information away from Google. No normal person will go through this process.

nebabyte 10y ago

If you live in a world of "should be"s, it would be safest for you to assume that nothing was ever sacred, no. There were just opportunities being passed up or that weren't feasible until now.