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The point is that there is no reason those features need to be dependent on Google Play Services in the first place

joshuamorton 9y ago
I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data. And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in a really straightforward way". Or perhaps you mean that they could just provide raw GPS data and the app developers could handle everything else, but that too runs into power and usability issues. Android handles geocoding and reverse geocoding in relatively energy efficient (and reliable!) ways. If every app had to do its own geocoding, you'd have disparate experiences in apps. (Note that Apple does almost the same thing: there are builtin geocoder objects provided by the OS that convert from GPS to address over the network). You could make that a separate thing, but then you'd get people complaining that "none of my location based apps work even though I have GPS enabled". So I guess I'm curious what your suggestion on what they should do instead is.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  > I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data. That may be, but they could open up that service for me to run on my own server, rather than through them. > And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in a really straightforward way". I'm not following what you mean by this. Can you expand? > If every app had to do its own geocoding, you'd have disparate experiences in apps. And? I already have disparate experiences in apps for tons of reasons.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >And? I already have disparate experiences in apps for tons of reasons. So because some things are a bad experience, we should make more things a bad experience? I don't follow. Or do you mean that you as an end user, not an app developer, should be able to configure the server used to look up the mapping of gps coordinates to street addresses used system wide, as though that isn't a giant security vulnerability? (as in, if I were Uber or Lyft, I wouldn't want to deploy my app on a platform where another app with root privileges could, for example, change the GPS lookup location to something adversarial whenever uber was in the foreground, leading to bad end user experiences). As far as I know, apps can already do their own geocoding (no one could really stop them), they just don't because the built in ones are better and give consistent experiences. >I'm not following what you mean by this. Can you expand? I guess I'm not clear on what the problem with "I get my location through google play services" is. Like I understand why one might take issue with "the only way to get location data is to opt in to Google having my location history". But that's not what happens, since you can turn that off. So I'm unclear on why Play Services being the source of location data, as opposed to something else.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      > So because some things are a bad experience, we should make more things a bad experience? I don't see how disparate experiences are bad experiences. Those are two entirely different things. > if I were Uber or Lyft, I wouldn't want to deploy my app on a platform where another app with root privileges could, for example, change the GPS lookup location to something adversarial whenever uber was in the foreground, leading to bad end user experiences Is there any reason this can't be done today? I already have root on my platform, and, afaik, I can spoof my gps coordinates. Besides, if you don't like how a platform has set up its permissions, then don't develop for that platform. > But that's not what happens, since you can turn that off You can flag a button, that tells you that it is turned off. There's no way of knowing whether or not they actually keep my data.
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        >I don't see how disparate experiences are bad experiences. Those are two entirely different things Inconsistent experiences is perhaps the single biggest complaint about Android as a platform. This is on comparison to iOS which has much stricter controls on how things can look and what you can do. Unified interfaces are better experiences. Predictability is a part of good ux. >Is there any reason this can't be done today? I already have root on my platform, and, afaik, I can spoof my gps coordinates. Besides, if you don't like how a platform has set up its permissions, then don't develop for that platform I'm honestly not 100% sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's the kind of thing that only possible via BusyBox or whatever. As for the second part of your comment: losing Uber for a feature that will be used by 6 people is not a reasonable trade-off for a platform to make. >There's no way of knowing whether or not they actually keep my data. Well yes there is. You can see all the data Google has one you via takeout. For location specifically, there's timeline. Unless you mean that you think they are lying and secretly storing your data in which case there's a plethora of legal reasons they can't do that. You're veering off into conspiracy territory. (I work at Google but these opinions are mine alone)

I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data. And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in a really straightforward way". Or perhaps you mean that they could just provide raw GPS data and the app developers could handle everything else, but that too runs into power and usability issues. Android handles geocoding and reverse geocoding in relatively energy efficient (and reliable!) ways. If every app had to do its own geocoding, you'd have disparate experiences in apps. (Note that Apple does almost the same thing: there are builtin geocoder objects provided by the OS that convert from GPS to address over the network). You could make that a separate thing, but then you'd get people complaining that "none of my location based apps work even though I have GPS enabled". So I guess I'm curious what your suggestion on what they should do instead is.

CaptSpify 9y ago
> I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data. That may be, but they could open up that service for me to run on my own server, rather than through them. > And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in a really straightforward way". I'm not following what you mean by this. Can you expand? > If every app had to do its own geocoding, you'd have disparate experiences in apps. And? I already have disparate experiences in apps for tons of reasons.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >And? I already have disparate experiences in apps for tons of reasons. So because some things are a bad experience, we should make more things a bad experience? I don't follow. Or do you mean that you as an end user, not an app developer, should be able to configure the server used to look up the mapping of gps coordinates to street addresses used system wide, as though that isn't a giant security vulnerability? (as in, if I were Uber or Lyft, I wouldn't want to deploy my app on a platform where another app with root privileges could, for example, change the GPS lookup location to something adversarial whenever uber was in the foreground, leading to bad end user experiences). As far as I know, apps can already do their own geocoding (no one could really stop them), they just don't because the built in ones are better and give consistent experiences. >I'm not following what you mean by this. Can you expand? I guess I'm not clear on what the problem with "I get my location through google play services" is. Like I understand why one might take issue with "the only way to get location data is to opt in to Google having my location history". But that's not what happens, since you can turn that off. So I'm unclear on why Play Services being the source of location data, as opposed to something else.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    > So because some things are a bad experience, we should make more things a bad experience? I don't see how disparate experiences are bad experiences. Those are two entirely different things. > if I were Uber or Lyft, I wouldn't want to deploy my app on a platform where another app with root privileges could, for example, change the GPS lookup location to something adversarial whenever uber was in the foreground, leading to bad end user experiences Is there any reason this can't be done today? I already have root on my platform, and, afaik, I can spoof my gps coordinates. Besides, if you don't like how a platform has set up its permissions, then don't develop for that platform. > But that's not what happens, since you can turn that off You can flag a button, that tells you that it is turned off. There's no way of knowing whether or not they actually keep my data.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      >I don't see how disparate experiences are bad experiences. Those are two entirely different things Inconsistent experiences is perhaps the single biggest complaint about Android as a platform. This is on comparison to iOS which has much stricter controls on how things can look and what you can do. Unified interfaces are better experiences. Predictability is a part of good ux. >Is there any reason this can't be done today? I already have root on my platform, and, afaik, I can spoof my gps coordinates. Besides, if you don't like how a platform has set up its permissions, then don't develop for that platform I'm honestly not 100% sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's the kind of thing that only possible via BusyBox or whatever. As for the second part of your comment: losing Uber for a feature that will be used by 6 people is not a reasonable trade-off for a platform to make. >There's no way of knowing whether or not they actually keep my data. Well yes there is. You can see all the data Google has one you via takeout. For location specifically, there's timeline. Unless you mean that you think they are lying and secretly storing your data in which case there's a plethora of legal reasons they can't do that. You're veering off into conspiracy territory. (I work at Google but these opinions are mine alone)