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I tried using Google Maps without search history turned on. It's basically a downgraded version. They tied saving locations with the search history, so it won't

I tried using Google Maps without search history turned on. It's basically a downgraded version. They tied saving locations with the search history, so it won't let you search for friends' contacts, set a home address, etc. Is it on purpose? I don't know, but I find it weird that they would tie some unrelated features together. Why does setting a Home address require search history?

sf_rob 8y ago
They appear to have fixed this in the past year. I had the same issue.
- scottwernervt 8y ago
  I still get asked to enable web history to set my home address: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugdx10p8yfm24k8/Screenshot_20190201-102523.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugdx10p8yfm24k8/Screenshot_2019020...
- levesque 8y ago
  As of last month it still wasn't the case for me. In the end, I turned back search history on, I decided to pay the 'price' for the features.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    That’s what they want and I am sure it’s very successful. Still very sleazy.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
feocco 8y ago
Basically useless is pretty hyperbolic. Saying "Navigate to 12 John Street, Bullocks NY" is very simple. The main features work quite well without search history. Though I'd agree setting a home address shouldn't be tied to search history, if that's the case.
- levesque 8y ago
  Yeah, I agree it was a bit strong, I edited to "downgraded".
IanCal 8y ago
Google either do or used to automatically detect your home and work based on your history. While I agree it should be settable without it, that may be the reason why they were tied.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That’s a very charitable way to explain this. It’s much more likely that they want to coerce people to turn on tracking.
  - IanCal 8y ago
    Quite possibly, though I have a very uncharitable reason for my guess. Google likes to go for "don't worry we'll do it automatically!" but they're overconfident and often terrible at it. This seems to happen throughout the business and is a huge downside to me. I wonder if they added the feature without thinking it'd be worth letting people set it themselves because they're so good at doing it automatically. This also has the benefit of being a decision made at a lower level rather a larger "add more tracking" push. I've had to turn off lots of automated Google things like ticket reminders (that tell me to catch the wrong train because they can't read the email right).
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Google either do or used to automatically detect your home and work based on your history The iPhone does that. Or at least tries. It knows that the place I live is my wife's home, but for me it's always labeled "gym." Apple Maps should talk to my Health app and figure out that the chances I'm at a gym are pretty much zero.
paganel 8y ago
> so it won't let you (...) set a home address That's a feature for me.
- levesque 8y ago
  It's pretty useful when you use your phone a lot for navigation / GPS. Saves you a bunch of time, but true it does have the cost of letting Google know where you live (although there are so many other ways for them to get that information that I'm not worried about that part).
  - pnutjam 8y ago
    I keep all my addresses as "starred" I don't set anything as home or work. I figure it will protect from a cursory db search, but anyone interested can figure out both trivially. What pisses me off is that everytime I turn on my phone gps it defaults to "high accuracy" mode which scans all the wifi ap's around, among other things. I have to manually set it to gps chip only every time.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      Your home address is never secret unless you completely disconnect from society. All the data aggregators with an entry on you will get updates soon after every move.
- ape4 8y ago
  I have my google home set to a place I often go to. Not my home.
modzu 8y ago
it is absolutely on purpose. a workaround is you can set pins on the map. instead of a list, you have to zoom out of the map, but then you can click a pin, for example for quick directions to your home address.
- enedil 8y ago
  Yes, as long as you are logged in. If you log out, that possibility disappears too.
maxxxxx 8y ago
Yeah. Tying setting the home address to search history is pretty sleazy and there is no good explanation for this other than bullying people into turning on tracking. I am really getting tired of companies that want to suck up every piece of data.
- dzader 8y ago
  Curious why you feel so entitled that you think Google should provide you with their free mapping service and features with nothing in exchange?
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I don't feel entitled and I rarely use them but it's still sleazy behavior. There are a lot of people who don't understand what consequences using Google or Facebook has to their privacy and these companies happily prey on them.
    - dzader 8y ago
      What are the consequences? I guess I don't understand them either
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        One consequence is that your personal data gets sold to whoever wants to pay for it. In the long run a serious consequence will be that all the data they collect could be used by a dictatorship to suppress opposition. I am sure Hitler and Stalin would have been very happy with the data Google and Facebook have. Once you have full-scale surveillance and the means to analyze the data in a country any kind of political opposition will be very hard.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - WD-42 8y ago
dddddaviddddd 8y ago
Additionally hypocritical since turning location history back on will restore your home address — Google's been keeping it all along and just denying you access to it.
- delusional 8y ago
  Even worse. Using navigation to your home address, they will actually ask you to "Save your home address", but then pop up a permission to track your search history. Want to use the assistant to turn on your lights? You better believe that requires the huge "Web and App activity" which also includes location.
  - beezischillin 8y ago
    That's nuts! As barebones as Siri is, I guess this is one of the things Apple got right with their software integration.
- krferriter 8y ago
  Wow this really does make it worse. Google is intentionally inconveniencing users who turn off location tracking, not for any technical or privacy reason but just to try to get them to turn it back on.
kissickas 8y ago
It's very stupid to me, just as a policy, and I would love if someone could explain it to me. I would understand completely if they didn't let users view traffic data or have their routing done based on traffic data if they don't share their location; don't put in your data, you don't get to take advantage of the rest of the dataset. But tying two unrelated features together like this is confusing, aggressive, and downright illogical as far as I can tell. I think they would get back a good amount of goodwill if they did so, and would keep a large portion of the userbase on board without looking like (and being) assholes. Plenty of people use read receipts in WhatsApp, for example, in order to see others' read receipts.
Roverlord 8y ago
I've typed the same postcode into Maps almost every day for the past 5 years - Google, could you maybe help it be the first autocomplete result when I enter it manually?
- tome 8y ago
  > I've typed the same postcode into Maps almost every day for the past 5 years That's fascinating. Why?
  - throwawaylolx 8y ago
    Perhaps checking shared transport schedule/platform to get back home.
  - Roverlord 8y ago
    Home (that I won't let it remember because creeping permissions) to wherever my appointments are.
- jonlucc 8y ago
  Anecdotally, I have a few locations I put in weekly or so to make sure I have an accurate ETA or to see if one of two routes is obstructed. They autocomplete as soon as I type the first letter of either, and they're in the dropdown list of locations under either "This Week" or "Previous Searches". These are both named locations, so maybe that's different from an address?
- Pxtl 8y ago
  I don't get why this is downvoted. I have the "spy on me all the time" stuff left on and I've found Google maps Autocomplete hilariously awful. Like, when I submit and get locations back it's generally okay, but the Autocomplete suggestions are just insane. Like, they know exactly where I am all the time, why are they Autocompleting locations that are nowhere near me or any of my typical destinations?
aherz 8y ago
As manipulative as Google can be, we should keep in mind that Google Maps is incredibly useful and we get to use it for "free". Yes we pay with our data and privacy and Google can do a better job of making that transparent but we can only get so upset when we don't get the full version of a product when we don't want to give our data.
- OmarGonzalez 8y ago
  Yeah no, I rather pay a fee for that
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    OSMAND is pretty good.
    - codedokode 8y ago
      It uses Openstreetmap and can work offline.
  - aherz 8y ago
    A paid version would be great but Google would have to figure out how to judge traffic levels without location data.
    - _underfl0w_ 8y ago
      There are other suppliers of traffic data outside Google. In fact, some of Google's traffic data is based off things like police reports.
    - OmarGonzalez 8y ago
      Yeah I'm not saying is easier for google, but would be a net gain for everyone in the long run
  - ljcn 8y ago
    There are plenty of paid-for satnavs. Tomtom Navigation GPS Traffic (Android)/ Tomtom GO (iOS) get good reviews for motoring. Citymapper is free and great for public transport. I'm sure there are many others.
stickfigure 8y ago
This seems pretty reasonable to me, although perhaps they named the switch poorly. My guess is that the product manager is trying to provide a single simple "privacy fiend" setting. You apparently want fine-grained privacy controls ("save my personal locations, but not my search history"). It's reasonable to want that, but it seems awfully entitled (not you, but many others on this thread) to demand it. Especially since we've seen from past history that a multitude of fine-grained privacy controls tends to propagate the narrative "Evil corporation confuses users with complex privacy UI". Product management is way harder than you are giving it credit for.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  This is disingenuous and unreasonable. The setting is unnecessarily restrictive. It's simple: "Do you want us to store your data on our servers?" Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. This is nowhere near a product problem. The setting is per-account, so it's not like it'd be disabled on one device and enabled on another, so they'd get some weird UX, they just like crippling their app to force you to give them data.
  - dzader 8y ago
    It's simple: "Do you want us to store your data on our servers?" Why don't you just build your own mapping software then if its all so easy?
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Because then I wouldn't get inane comments from random commenters online and my life would be substantially worse.
  - creato 8y ago
    > Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. I think you are ridiculously underestimating the complexity and issues that would arise with two separate mechanisms for saving the same kind of data, and an option to switch between the two. Do you download account-saved locations locally when changing to local storage? What if there are conflicting pieces of data? I bet there would be a lot more outraged people about the bugs and limitations that would arise with this system than there are today with your complaints.
rifung 8y ago
> Is it on purpose? I don't know, but I find it weird that they would tie some unrelated features together. Why does setting a Home address require search history? I work at Google but not on Maps, opinions are my own. I don't know if this is why they did it that way, but it wouldn't surprise me if the reason was merely that 99.9% of users opt in to location sharing and the developers didn't feel it useful to spend time supporting the use case for the 0.1%. You have to also keep in mind that Google is just a company with thousands of individuals who each have their own motives and are given incentives by the company. If a developer is career driven (and many if not most are) they have to work on "high impact" things to get a good performance review. Since Google tries to be very objective, you have to measure your impact with data and sadly 0.1% of users is not really considered impactful. Unfortunately good will earned by customers is hard to measure. Again just my observation from working here.
- cjarrett 8y ago
  >If a developer is career driven (and many if not most are) they have to work on "high impact" things to get a good performance review. Since Google tries to be very objective, you have to measure your impact with data and sadly 0.1% of users is not really considered impactful. Unfortunately good will earned by customers is hard to measure. I find this very appropriate to modern times and employment. 'Tis A more modern update to William Gaddis's themes in J.R.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaymaroon 8y ago
  All I can think when I see someone willingly admit to working at Google is "ew what is that thing."
- FabHK 8y ago
  Well, in particular, if a developer "untied" these things (ie made the app more useful without signing in), and then the ratio of users who do sign in drops, then that is presumably a "bad impact" metric for the developer. Why would they do that? It seems rather obvious that there is little incentive to provide usefulness without tying it as closely as possible to data collection.
davb 8y ago
It's even worse than that. The toggle they make you turn on in order to save an address in Maps is "Web and App Activity". This includes your search history, app activity (including third party, non Google apps) and most worryingly your location history. So in order to have my home address saved in Google Maps, I have to let Google monitor my location 24/7, see how often I use my banking app, and which medical complaints I've been searching recently. This seems pretty excessive and I think it's designed to be so (as the article linked above suggests). I appreciate the services Google provides but the cost is becoming excessive. A paid option (with everything enabled and no tracking at all) or at least more granular permissions seem like the bare minimum as people become more privacy conscious.
sharkmerry 8y ago
It doesn't, they "paywall" features, as they get better data and can better monetize you. In order to have youtube app work when the screen is off, you have to pay for youtube. Its something they could provide but if they can force you to pay or give up more data (paying in a round about way) they are going to do it
mda 8y ago
Are you talking about location history or search history? All answers below seem to be talking about location history.

sf_rob 8y ago

They appear to have fixed this in the past year. I had the same issue.

scottwernervt 8y ago
I still get asked to enable web history to set my home address: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugdx10p8yfm24k8/Screenshot_20190201-102523.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugdx10p8yfm24k8/Screenshot_2019020...
levesque 8y ago
As of last month it still wasn't the case for me. In the end, I turned back search history on, I decided to pay the 'price' for the features.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That’s what they want and I am sure it’s very successful. Still very sleazy.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

feocco 8y ago

Basically useless is pretty hyperbolic. Saying "Navigate to 12 John Street, Bullocks NY" is very simple. The main features work quite well without search history. Though I'd agree setting a home address shouldn't be tied to search history, if that's the case.

levesque 8y ago
Yeah, I agree it was a bit strong, I edited to "downgraded".

IanCal 8y ago

Google either do or used to automatically detect your home and work based on your history. While I agree it should be settable without it, that may be the reason why they were tied.

maxxxxx 8y ago
That’s a very charitable way to explain this. It’s much more likely that they want to coerce people to turn on tracking.
- IanCal 8y ago
  Quite possibly, though I have a very uncharitable reason for my guess. Google likes to go for "don't worry we'll do it automatically!" but they're overconfident and often terrible at it. This seems to happen throughout the business and is a huge downside to me. I wonder if they added the feature without thinking it'd be worth letting people set it themselves because they're so good at doing it automatically. This also has the benefit of being a decision made at a lower level rather a larger "add more tracking" push. I've had to turn off lots of automated Google things like ticket reminders (that tell me to catch the wrong train because they can't read the email right).
reaperducer 8y ago
Google either do or used to automatically detect your home and work based on your history The iPhone does that. Or at least tries. It knows that the place I live is my wife's home, but for me it's always labeled "gym." Apple Maps should talk to my Health app and figure out that the chances I'm at a gym are pretty much zero.

paganel 8y ago

> so it won't let you (...) set a home address That's a feature for me.

levesque 8y ago
It's pretty useful when you use your phone a lot for navigation / GPS. Saves you a bunch of time, but true it does have the cost of letting Google know where you live (although there are so many other ways for them to get that information that I'm not worried about that part).
- pnutjam 8y ago
  I keep all my addresses as "starred" I don't set anything as home or work. I figure it will protect from a cursory db search, but anyone interested can figure out both trivially. What pisses me off is that everytime I turn on my phone gps it defaults to "high accuracy" mode which scans all the wifi ap's around, among other things. I have to manually set it to gps chip only every time.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    Your home address is never secret unless you completely disconnect from society. All the data aggregators with an entry on you will get updates soon after every move.
ape4 8y ago
I have my google home set to a place I often go to. Not my home.

modzu 8y ago

it is absolutely on purpose. a workaround is you can set pins on the map. instead of a list, you have to zoom out of the map, but then you can click a pin, for example for quick directions to your home address.

enedil 8y ago
Yes, as long as you are logged in. If you log out, that possibility disappears too.

maxxxxx 8y ago

Yeah. Tying setting the home address to search history is pretty sleazy and there is no good explanation for this other than bullying people into turning on tracking. I am really getting tired of companies that want to suck up every piece of data.

dzader 8y ago
Curious why you feel so entitled that you think Google should provide you with their free mapping service and features with nothing in exchange?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I don't feel entitled and I rarely use them but it's still sleazy behavior. There are a lot of people who don't understand what consequences using Google or Facebook has to their privacy and these companies happily prey on them.
  - dzader 8y ago
    What are the consequences? I guess I don't understand them either
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      One consequence is that your personal data gets sold to whoever wants to pay for it. In the long run a serious consequence will be that all the data they collect could be used by a dictatorship to suppress opposition. I am sure Hitler and Stalin would have been very happy with the data Google and Facebook have. Once you have full-scale surveillance and the means to analyze the data in a country any kind of political opposition will be very hard.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - WD-42 8y ago

dddddaviddddd 8y ago

Additionally hypocritical since turning location history back on will restore your home address — Google's been keeping it all along and just denying you access to it.

delusional 8y ago
Even worse. Using navigation to your home address, they will actually ask you to "Save your home address", but then pop up a permission to track your search history. Want to use the assistant to turn on your lights? You better believe that requires the huge "Web and App activity" which also includes location.
- beezischillin 8y ago
  That's nuts! As barebones as Siri is, I guess this is one of the things Apple got right with their software integration.
krferriter 8y ago
Wow this really does make it worse. Google is intentionally inconveniencing users who turn off location tracking, not for any technical or privacy reason but just to try to get them to turn it back on.

kissickas 8y ago

It's very stupid to me, just as a policy, and I would love if someone could explain it to me. I would understand completely if they didn't let users view traffic data or have their routing done based on traffic data if they don't share their location; don't put in your data, you don't get to take advantage of the rest of the dataset. But tying two unrelated features together like this is confusing, aggressive, and downright illogical as far as I can tell. I think they would get back a good amount of goodwill if they did so, and would keep a large portion of the userbase on board without looking like (and being) assholes. Plenty of people use read receipts in WhatsApp, for example, in order to see others' read receipts.

Roverlord 8y ago

I've typed the same postcode into Maps almost every day for the past 5 years - Google, could you maybe help it be the first autocomplete result when I enter it manually?

tome 8y ago
> I've typed the same postcode into Maps almost every day for the past 5 years That's fascinating. Why?
- throwawaylolx 8y ago
  Perhaps checking shared transport schedule/platform to get back home.
- Roverlord 8y ago
  Home (that I won't let it remember because creeping permissions) to wherever my appointments are.
jonlucc 8y ago
Anecdotally, I have a few locations I put in weekly or so to make sure I have an accurate ETA or to see if one of two routes is obstructed. They autocomplete as soon as I type the first letter of either, and they're in the dropdown list of locations under either "This Week" or "Previous Searches". These are both named locations, so maybe that's different from an address?
Pxtl 8y ago
I don't get why this is downvoted. I have the "spy on me all the time" stuff left on and I've found Google maps Autocomplete hilariously awful. Like, when I submit and get locations back it's generally okay, but the Autocomplete suggestions are just insane. Like, they know exactly where I am all the time, why are they Autocompleting locations that are nowhere near me or any of my typical destinations?

aherz 8y ago

As manipulative as Google can be, we should keep in mind that Google Maps is incredibly useful and we get to use it for "free". Yes we pay with our data and privacy and Google can do a better job of making that transparent but we can only get so upset when we don't get the full version of a product when we don't want to give our data.

OmarGonzalez 8y ago
Yeah no, I rather pay a fee for that
- StavrosK 8y ago
  OSMAND is pretty good.
  - codedokode 8y ago
    It uses Openstreetmap and can work offline.
- aherz 8y ago
  A paid version would be great but Google would have to figure out how to judge traffic levels without location data.
  - _underfl0w_ 8y ago
    There are other suppliers of traffic data outside Google. In fact, some of Google's traffic data is based off things like police reports.
  - OmarGonzalez 8y ago
    Yeah I'm not saying is easier for google, but would be a net gain for everyone in the long run
- ljcn 8y ago
  There are plenty of paid-for satnavs. Tomtom Navigation GPS Traffic (Android)/ Tomtom GO (iOS) get good reviews for motoring. Citymapper is free and great for public transport. I'm sure there are many others.

stickfigure 8y ago

This seems pretty reasonable to me, although perhaps they named the switch poorly. My guess is that the product manager is trying to provide a single simple "privacy fiend" setting. You apparently want fine-grained privacy controls ("save my personal locations, but not my search history"). It's reasonable to want that, but it seems awfully entitled (not you, but many others on this thread) to demand it. Especially since we've seen from past history that a multitude of fine-grained privacy controls tends to propagate the narrative "Evil corporation confuses users with complex privacy UI". Product management is way harder than you are giving it credit for.

StavrosK 8y ago
This is disingenuous and unreasonable. The setting is unnecessarily restrictive. It's simple: "Do you want us to store your data on our servers?" Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. This is nowhere near a product problem. The setting is per-account, so it's not like it'd be disabled on one device and enabled on another, so they'd get some weird UX, they just like crippling their app to force you to give them data.
- dzader 8y ago
  It's simple: "Do you want us to store your data on our servers?" Why don't you just build your own mapping software then if its all so easy?
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Because then I wouldn't get inane comments from random commenters online and my life would be substantially worse.
- creato 8y ago
  > Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. I think you are ridiculously underestimating the complexity and issues that would arise with two separate mechanisms for saving the same kind of data, and an option to switch between the two. Do you download account-saved locations locally when changing to local storage? What if there are conflicting pieces of data? I bet there would be a lot more outraged people about the bugs and limitations that would arise with this system than there are today with your complaints.

rifung 8y ago

> Is it on purpose? I don't know, but I find it weird that they would tie some unrelated features together. Why does setting a Home address require search history? I work at Google but not on Maps, opinions are my own. I don't know if this is why they did it that way, but it wouldn't surprise me if the reason was merely that 99.9% of users opt in to location sharing and the developers didn't feel it useful to spend time supporting the use case for the 0.1%. You have to also keep in mind that Google is just a company with thousands of individuals who each have their own motives and are given incentives by the company. If a developer is career driven (and many if not most are) they have to work on "high impact" things to get a good performance review. Since Google tries to be very objective, you have to measure your impact with data and sadly 0.1% of users is not really considered impactful. Unfortunately good will earned by customers is hard to measure. Again just my observation from working here.

cjarrett 8y ago
>If a developer is career driven (and many if not most are) they have to work on "high impact" things to get a good performance review. Since Google tries to be very objective, you have to measure your impact with data and sadly 0.1% of users is not really considered impactful. Unfortunately good will earned by customers is hard to measure. I find this very appropriate to modern times and employment. 'Tis A more modern update to William Gaddis's themes in J.R.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
throwawaymaroon 8y ago
All I can think when I see someone willingly admit to working at Google is "ew what is that thing."
FabHK 8y ago
Well, in particular, if a developer "untied" these things (ie made the app more useful without signing in), and then the ratio of users who do sign in drops, then that is presumably a "bad impact" metric for the developer. Why would they do that? It seems rather obvious that there is little incentive to provide usefulness without tying it as closely as possible to data collection.

davb 8y ago

It's even worse than that. The toggle they make you turn on in order to save an address in Maps is "Web and App Activity". This includes your search history, app activity (including third party, non Google apps) and most worryingly your location history. So in order to have my home address saved in Google Maps, I have to let Google monitor my location 24/7, see how often I use my banking app, and which medical complaints I've been searching recently. This seems pretty excessive and I think it's designed to be so (as the article linked above suggests). I appreciate the services Google provides but the cost is becoming excessive. A paid option (with everything enabled and no tracking at all) or at least more granular permissions seem like the bare minimum as people become more privacy conscious.

sharkmerry 8y ago

It doesn't, they "paywall" features, as they get better data and can better monetize you. In order to have youtube app work when the screen is off, you have to pay for youtube. Its something they could provide but if they can force you to pay or give up more data (paying in a round about way) they are going to do it

mda 8y ago

Are you talking about location history or search history? All answers below seem to be talking about location history.