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Concerned that google has so much info (https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity) I visited https://myaccount.google.co

Concerned that google has so much info (https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity) I visited https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols to turn off Web & App Activity, but left Voice & Audio Activity on. This breaks my google home. I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. This is a dark pattern Google

AJ007 9y ago
I’m waiting for an answer to this: will the least invasive platforms end up the least intelligent?
- jes5199 9y ago
  what's so great about "intelligent" platforms? They're constantly doing something wrong or at least useless.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    The level of frustration in trying to get Siri to do something when you can’t use your hands is quite something. I’d like something a bit better.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Almost certainly, if they don't know anything about you they can at best show the median/average outcome. Some of this can be counteracted with local processing, but that's not really hardware efficient, e.g. you wouldn't consider running a Google instance on everyone's phone. Breakthroughs in how we do computation could change this, but it would need to be a significant breakthrough, e.g. in homomorphic encryption and differential privacy or huge progress in compute/storage price/density/energy usage.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    It's also counter to how our industry's gone, everything's cloud these days, not just because of their insatiable need to feast on our privacy, but also because it's easier to maintain, upgrade, etc. and effectively cuts piracy to nothing.
- ihm 9y ago
  Eventually, once various forms of fully homomorphic encryption become practical, we can have the best of both worlds. That being said, using cryptography to protect information will probably always have some (albeit constant) overhead over unprotected computation, so it may be true that these platforms will still be the "least intelligent" even though they are intelligent enough.
freehunter 9y ago
This has been my stance for about five years now. I don’t want to give all this info to companies I don’t trust. Apple devices might cost more, but Apple only makes money from you when you give them money. Google and Facebook make money when you give them money and then make money when you give them information too. There’s a perverse incentive, they want you to use it more and give them more information because they make more money from selling you rather than selling to you. If you want that to change, you have to be willing to offset that price difference from your own wallet.
- Bombthecat 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure that one day Apple will also use / sell your data. Why? Because it makes them even more money...
  - georgebarnett 9y ago
    What evidence do you have for this baseless accusation? Apple have been hammering Google on privacy for many years and they have an incredible track record on privacy when they’ve had their feet held to the fire with the FBI.
    - Dibes 9y ago
      To play devil's advocate, I can see a world in which Apple as a publicly traded company is hard pressed into returning stronger results for its investors and turns to data as a way to expand. Not saying it will happen as there is no indicator that they need or want to. However, it is important to note that it isn't outside the realm of possibility at all.
      - hnzix 9y ago
        Apple are pushing privacy as a key differentiator and also to justify their premium price tag. Selling out on privacy would torpedo that USP. Trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets. Yes in a world of infinite possibilities anything can happen, but realistically Apple is incentivized to maintain their privacy position.
tmoravec 9y ago
I'd give them the benefit of the doubt here. It's probably just because of the voice control, which can be presumably used for web search. And they personalize the web search with your history. It looks more like poor engineering than a dark pattern.
- amelius 9y ago
  > It looks more like poor engineering than a dark pattern. Poor engineering and sensitive data are a bad combination.
  - Dibes 9y ago
    I am going to speculate that it isn't poor engineering per-say but more likely that they are solving for 95-99% use case and not spending the man-hours to make their systems work for the rest.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  I would buy that if they did that occasionally, but all their services behave badly when you try and take back some privacy. To me it feels like they're deliberately making it painful when you minimise what you share with them.
  - Draiken 9y ago
    I'd have to agree with the parent post. They create things for the 99.9999% that don't care about privacy and will never touch those settings. When you leave that massive group, that's when bugs will be way more common. We could argue that they intentionally only care about UX when you give them your data but then again that's capitalism, right? They might have to give you choice to turn those things off, but nobody can force them to give you the same experience. Imagine any executive saying he will focus on giving a great experience for the users that they can't make money out of. He'll be out of a job very quickly.
    - Buge 9y ago
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
> For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.
- majidazimi 9y ago
  I don't have problem if a company collects usage information. End of the day, they need it to improve the product. But for fuck's sake, DON'T sell it to others to increase revenue. Just use it for product development.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - crusader76 9y ago
    This is my problem too and they seem to be getting more bold. For example YouTube TV is $45 a month and you will still be hit with targeted commercials based on this accumulated data. For free services I'm kinda ok with it but if your paying? Not ok and not so entitled to expect separation.
- izacus 9y ago
  Please don't forget the treasure trove of data Apple gets via iCloud services, which rival Googles if you're invested in their ecosystem - contacts, calendars, emails, location (Find my phone), all application data (backups), etc. They don't also fully encrypt all of that information and give it to government on request.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Exactly and little transparency from Apple on what they collect and not dashboard like Google to delete or download.
product50 9y ago
Yeah - you want to make use of Google services (search, maps, youtube, Photos etc.) for free and don't want to give anything in return. #entitlement Also, most likely you turning off tracking will impact your Google experience. Google is different than Facebook in that they offer real value services without which you can't survive a day on the web. Just count how many times you rely on a Google service in a day. The least you can do is to support them in maintaining their ad ecosystem in return. Or be ready to pay for their servuces. Unlike Facebook, Google has never had a data breach/trust issue.
- zeta0134 9y ago
  Okay actually, I would pay to use most of Google's good services. I expect them to do advertising and they do not (!) need that kind of data on me for their search result advertising to be relevant. They have my search term; that should be enough in isolation. I would pay handsomely for Google Maps, but I have no such option. Again though, that is a service that works just fine without my individual data; they have my location and my search term, and any business that pops up is inherently relevant due to simple proximity. Please do not call this entitlement. Please understand that my privacy is valuable to me. Please understand that I would gladly pay to keep it.
  - product50 9y ago
    That is totally fair. My main point here was the users have to pay one way or the other. Either via more seeing more targeted ads, which sacrifices their privacy, or via real $$.
  - RandomException 9y ago
    You would now, but what if they had cost money in the first place? Like, you wouldn't have got used to their services for free for years? This is something people often forget when they are saying "of course I would pay money". The world would be a whole lot different place (not necessarily any better) if Google services cost money instead of gathering data and selling it forwards.
  - murukesh_s 9y ago
simfoo 9y ago
They also do this with Google Maps on Android. Disabled Location History sharing with Google? Sorry, we cannot remember the last search term you entered in Google Maps ON THE SAME DEVICE. This is so infuriating
- Normal_gaussian 9y ago
  No saved places, and it also breaks time estimations for journeys
  - joeseeder 9y ago
    Amazing, make me feel good about abandoning google ecosystem a few years ago Best part is I don’t miss it at all, grew up before evil google, didn’t get to rely on their evil parts when switched away
- taneq 9y ago
  All just part of training people to think that the two options are "all of your data is stored permanently on Google's servers and they can use it for anything" or "your data is not stored anywhere ever and you have to type everything from scratch every time". Store personal information on a device and not send it to the mothership? Unthinkable!
- darren_ 9y ago
  That would be terrible if it was true, which it isn't. Source: literally just tried it.
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    Perhaps not that specific option which controls some smaller facet of sharing and recommendations, however but it's definitely the case when you turn off syncing "Web & App Activity" with the Google panopticon. Where the history would usually be, there's just this nagging message: > To see your home and work, past searches, and other suggestions tailed for you, turn on Web & App Activity. ...Which, as mentioned already, misleadingly implies that local-history features are difficult or nonstandard.
rapnie 9y ago
There are all kinds of such dark patterns. If you switch from Chrome to Firefox on Android you find all kinds of features missing, like in image search. It's some time ago I checked, but I want to do a comparison and report to some naming & shaming site. Anyone knows a good one?
- mattmanser 9y ago
  Also try turning location off on your android phone so it only gets it when requested. The nagging, whining, breaking and pleading various google services do is confusing and annoying.
  - bhnmmhmd 9y ago
    Also, try to visit google.com by Edge/Safari/Firefox. It keeps nagging why you're not using Chrome and shows the banner constantly.
  - pca 9y ago
    If you revoke location permissions, Google still guesses it accurately, for me at least, "from your search history", as it says at the bottom of the search results page - even when you're not signed in (screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/wU8EZUA https://imgur.com/a/wU8EZUA). I wouldn't mind if they just used the IP address to locate me, but why use the search history? If I wanted Google to know my exact location, I wouldn't have revoked the permissions for it.
  - haZard_OS 9y ago
    I have been using FF Nightly on Android for quite some time. In addition, I have uninstalled or disabled every Google app I can find on my device. Last year, I switched to unlimited mobile data and (almost) never use WiFi, even when easily available. I use DDG instead of Google. Consequently, I am never nagged by Google apps or social media apps. I just don't have any problems like what I hear other people experience. Particularly amusing is seeing that my inferred location is way off.
    - mattmanser 9y ago
abvdasker 9y ago
If Google home were a free product it would make sense but for Google to use your data produced by using the product feels a lot like double dipping.
pacomerh 9y ago
Apple's device relies on Siri, which is very much behind in the smart cylinder race, or maybe you're interested on its audio quality capabilities, for that it sure excels.

AJ007 9y ago

I’m waiting for an answer to this: will the least invasive platforms end up the least intelligent?

jes5199 9y ago
what's so great about "intelligent" platforms? They're constantly doing something wrong or at least useless.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  The level of frustration in trying to get Siri to do something when you can’t use your hands is quite something. I’d like something a bit better.
Eridrus 9y ago
Almost certainly, if they don't know anything about you they can at best show the median/average outcome. Some of this can be counteracted with local processing, but that's not really hardware efficient, e.g. you wouldn't consider running a Google instance on everyone's phone. Breakthroughs in how we do computation could change this, but it would need to be a significant breakthrough, e.g. in homomorphic encryption and differential privacy or huge progress in compute/storage price/density/energy usage.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  It's also counter to how our industry's gone, everything's cloud these days, not just because of their insatiable need to feast on our privacy, but also because it's easier to maintain, upgrade, etc. and effectively cuts piracy to nothing.
ihm 9y ago
Eventually, once various forms of fully homomorphic encryption become practical, we can have the best of both worlds. That being said, using cryptography to protect information will probably always have some (albeit constant) overhead over unprotected computation, so it may be true that these platforms will still be the "least intelligent" even though they are intelligent enough.

freehunter 9y ago

This has been my stance for about five years now. I don’t want to give all this info to companies I don’t trust. Apple devices might cost more, but Apple only makes money from you when you give them money. Google and Facebook make money when you give them money and then make money when you give them information too. There’s a perverse incentive, they want you to use it more and give them more information because they make more money from selling you rather than selling to you. If you want that to change, you have to be willing to offset that price difference from your own wallet.

Bombthecat 9y ago
I'm pretty sure that one day Apple will also use / sell your data. Why? Because it makes them even more money...
- georgebarnett 9y ago
  What evidence do you have for this baseless accusation? Apple have been hammering Google on privacy for many years and they have an incredible track record on privacy when they’ve had their feet held to the fire with the FBI.
  - Dibes 9y ago
    To play devil's advocate, I can see a world in which Apple as a publicly traded company is hard pressed into returning stronger results for its investors and turns to data as a way to expand. Not saying it will happen as there is no indicator that they need or want to. However, it is important to note that it isn't outside the realm of possibility at all.
    - hnzix 9y ago
      Apple are pushing privacy as a key differentiator and also to justify their premium price tag. Selling out on privacy would torpedo that USP. Trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets. Yes in a world of infinite possibilities anything can happen, but realistically Apple is incentivized to maintain their privacy position.

tmoravec 9y ago

I'd give them the benefit of the doubt here. It's probably just because of the voice control, which can be presumably used for web search. And they personalize the web search with your history. It looks more like poor engineering than a dark pattern.

amelius 9y ago
> It looks more like poor engineering than a dark pattern. Poor engineering and sensitive data are a bad combination.
- Dibes 9y ago
  I am going to speculate that it isn't poor engineering per-say but more likely that they are solving for 95-99% use case and not spending the man-hours to make their systems work for the rest.
mattmanser 9y ago
I would buy that if they did that occasionally, but all their services behave badly when you try and take back some privacy. To me it feels like they're deliberately making it painful when you minimise what you share with them.
- Draiken 9y ago
  I'd have to agree with the parent post. They create things for the 99.9999% that don't care about privacy and will never touch those settings. When you leave that massive group, that's when bugs will be way more common. We could argue that they intentionally only care about UX when you give them your data but then again that's capitalism, right? They might have to give you choice to turn those things off, but nobody can force them to give you the same experience. Imagine any executive saying he will focus on giving a great experience for the users that they can't make money out of. He'll be out of a job very quickly.
  - Buge 9y ago

TAForObvReasons 9y ago

> For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.

majidazimi 9y ago
I don't have problem if a company collects usage information. End of the day, they need it to improve the product. But for fuck's sake, DON'T sell it to others to increase revenue. Just use it for product development.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- crusader76 9y ago
  This is my problem too and they seem to be getting more bold. For example YouTube TV is $45 a month and you will still be hit with targeted commercials based on this accumulated data. For free services I'm kinda ok with it but if your paying? Not ok and not so entitled to expect separation.
izacus 9y ago
Please don't forget the treasure trove of data Apple gets via iCloud services, which rival Googles if you're invested in their ecosystem - contacts, calendars, emails, location (Find my phone), all application data (backups), etc. They don't also fully encrypt all of that information and give it to government on request.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Exactly and little transparency from Apple on what they collect and not dashboard like Google to delete or download.

product50 9y ago

Yeah - you want to make use of Google services (search, maps, youtube, Photos etc.) for free and don't want to give anything in return. #entitlement Also, most likely you turning off tracking will impact your Google experience. Google is different than Facebook in that they offer real value services without which you can't survive a day on the web. Just count how many times you rely on a Google service in a day. The least you can do is to support them in maintaining their ad ecosystem in return. Or be ready to pay for their servuces. Unlike Facebook, Google has never had a data breach/trust issue.

zeta0134 9y ago
Okay actually, I would pay to use most of Google's good services. I expect them to do advertising and they do not (!) need that kind of data on me for their search result advertising to be relevant. They have my search term; that should be enough in isolation. I would pay handsomely for Google Maps, but I have no such option. Again though, that is a service that works just fine without my individual data; they have my location and my search term, and any business that pops up is inherently relevant due to simple proximity. Please do not call this entitlement. Please understand that my privacy is valuable to me. Please understand that I would gladly pay to keep it.
- product50 9y ago
  That is totally fair. My main point here was the users have to pay one way or the other. Either via more seeing more targeted ads, which sacrifices their privacy, or via real $$.
- RandomException 9y ago
  You would now, but what if they had cost money in the first place? Like, you wouldn't have got used to their services for free for years? This is something people often forget when they are saying "of course I would pay money". The world would be a whole lot different place (not necessarily any better) if Google services cost money instead of gathering data and selling it forwards.
- murukesh_s 9y ago

simfoo 9y ago

They also do this with Google Maps on Android. Disabled Location History sharing with Google? Sorry, we cannot remember the last search term you entered in Google Maps ON THE SAME DEVICE. This is so infuriating

Normal_gaussian 9y ago
No saved places, and it also breaks time estimations for journeys
- joeseeder 9y ago
  Amazing, make me feel good about abandoning google ecosystem a few years ago Best part is I don’t miss it at all, grew up before evil google, didn’t get to rely on their evil parts when switched away
taneq 9y ago
All just part of training people to think that the two options are "all of your data is stored permanently on Google's servers and they can use it for anything" or "your data is not stored anywhere ever and you have to type everything from scratch every time". Store personal information on a device and not send it to the mothership? Unthinkable!
darren_ 9y ago
That would be terrible if it was true, which it isn't. Source: literally just tried it.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Perhaps not that specific option which controls some smaller facet of sharing and recommendations, however but it's definitely the case when you turn off syncing "Web & App Activity" with the Google panopticon. Where the history would usually be, there's just this nagging message: > To see your home and work, past searches, and other suggestions tailed for you, turn on Web & App Activity. ...Which, as mentioned already, misleadingly implies that local-history features are difficult or nonstandard.

rapnie 9y ago

There are all kinds of such dark patterns. If you switch from Chrome to Firefox on Android you find all kinds of features missing, like in image search. It's some time ago I checked, but I want to do a comparison and report to some naming & shaming site. Anyone knows a good one?

mattmanser 9y ago
Also try turning location off on your android phone so it only gets it when requested. The nagging, whining, breaking and pleading various google services do is confusing and annoying.
- bhnmmhmd 9y ago
  Also, try to visit google.com by Edge/Safari/Firefox. It keeps nagging why you're not using Chrome and shows the banner constantly.
- pca 9y ago
  If you revoke location permissions, Google still guesses it accurately, for me at least, "from your search history", as it says at the bottom of the search results page - even when you're not signed in (screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/wU8EZUA https://imgur.com/a/wU8EZUA). I wouldn't mind if they just used the IP address to locate me, but why use the search history? If I wanted Google to know my exact location, I wouldn't have revoked the permissions for it.
- haZard_OS 9y ago
  I have been using FF Nightly on Android for quite some time. In addition, I have uninstalled or disabled every Google app I can find on my device. Last year, I switched to unlimited mobile data and (almost) never use WiFi, even when easily available. I use DDG instead of Google. Consequently, I am never nagged by Google apps or social media apps. I just don't have any problems like what I hear other people experience. Particularly amusing is seeing that my inferred location is way off.
  - mattmanser 9y ago

abvdasker 9y ago

If Google home were a free product it would make sense but for Google to use your data produced by using the product feels a lot like double dipping.

pacomerh 9y ago

Apple's device relies on Siri, which is very much behind in the smart cylinder race, or maybe you're interested on its audio quality capabilities, for that it sure excels.