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> 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
by rifung 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.
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.
I work for Google, opinions are my own. I could go on and on about this so apologies for the long post.
Obviously I am biased, but I think you're being a little too cynical.
People's habits largely depend on the incentives given to them. There is no incentive for the Maps team to take in more data, if anything there are incentives to have less data because they'd have to go through less security and privacy reviews.
What they DO have an incentive to do is to get more users, since that largely determines how much funding your team gets. Having users share location data, admittedly at the expense of privacy, provides a superior experience.
Each team has limited funding/headcount, so obviously they would use their resources as much as possible to try and get more users. Supporting the use case you described, which is not used by the vast majority of users does not align with the incentives given to them.
Recently, Google updated its values (I can't find it externally but I hope you'll believe me). One of these values is "Respect the User". I personally think that your use case would fall under this umbrella. Ignoring whether the specific feature is the best use of engineering time even for this value, the reality is that values mean nothing without incentives.
And there aren't incentives. You don't get a great performance rating for following the values, you get one for impacting some large percentage of users or improving the performance or conversion rates.
Even if you had a team of monks, completely driven by their morals and not career-driven whatsoever, this would not be sufficient because if they didn't hit performance goals then the team would just get defunded, unless the person above them was also the same, and the person above them, and so on.
- StavrosK 8y ago> Obviously I am biased, but I think you're being a little too cynical. Very possibly. > Supporting the use case you described, which is not used by the vast majority of users does not align with the incentives given to them. I think you have causation wrong here. Users leave search history enabled because Google makes it unnecessarily hard to use the app with it disabled. > Recently, Google updated its values (I can't find it externally but I hope you'll believe me). One of these values is "Respect the User". I have no reason to disbelieve you. > Ignoring whether the specific feature is the best use of engineering time even for this value, the reality is that values mean nothing without incentives. If the values mean nothing without incentives, they aren't values, are they? > You don't get a great performance rating for following the values, you get one for impacting some large percentage of users or improving the performance or conversion rates. So what you're saying is "there's no incentive for allowing the user to have a good experience using the app without sending us data", or did I get that wrong? That doesn't sound awesome. > Having users share location data, admittedly at the expense of privacy, provides a superior experience. Especially when you don't bother providing a similar experience without people's data. Ultimately, this isn't a question of "which would make Maps better, if users shared their data or if they didn't?". That's not your choice to make, so it's a question of "the user doesn't want to share their data, do we bother to make the experience good for them or not?" If your answer to the latter is "No", I don't care if your values say "The User is the Alpha and the Omega, thou shalt have no other priorities before the User", it's a red herring because you aren't following your values, you're following the money.
- rifung 8y ago> I think you have causation wrong here. Users leave search history enabled because Google makes it unnecessarily hard to use the app with it disabled. That's a fair point. Nevertheless, most people on the team were not there when this feature was first introduced and we can only work from where we are now. To undo the status quo is something few are in a position to do. > So what you're saying is "there's no incentive for allowing the user to have a good experience using the app without sending us data", or did I get that wrong? That doesn't sound awesome. Correct. > If your answer to the latter is "No", I don't care if your values say "The User is the Alpha and the Omega, thou shalt have no other priorities before the User", it's a red herring because you aren't following your values, you're following the money. I think we are in agreement. I don't think anyone is following the Values because the incentive structure doesn't align with it. I would like to believe it takes time for these changes to manifest but frankly I'm skeptical it will ever happen. I'm not trying to convince you things are great or even okay. I just would like to dispel the notion that everyone or every team at Google is scheming together to get as much of your data as possible. Google, like any company, is made of individuals who largely are there to make money and whose actions are driven by the incentive structure. As it stands, the incentives are largely around getting more users and there is very little incentive to create privacy focused solutions (customers don't really seem to care.. or know..?)
- StavrosK 8y agoIt does, indeed, sound like we are in agreement. I'm not saying everyone in Google is evil and wants the worst for the user, but that Google doesn't really care about the user and that shows. I guess everyone in the company is complicit to that, with a share of responsibility proportional to the amount of power they have, as with any organization...
- librish 8y agoI think it's more accurate to say Google doesn't care very much about privacy concerned users since they represent a very small portion of the user base.
- 8y ago
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoI feel like you may have entirely dismissed the issue that location-based advertising is quite possibly, the most valuable form of advertising Google can conduct, and Google has massive incentives to collect location data. Statements like "there is no incentive for the Maps team to take in more data" feel like they completely ignore your employer's primary business model.
- darren_ 8y agoSo I in fact work on the maps team. There is absolutely no _personal_ incentive for me (or anyone on my team) to help Google collect more location data. I will not get a bonus for it, I will not get an increased perf rating for it, any benefit I would get from it (increased stock price, I guess?) is so completely abstracted away that it simply does not register. There is an incentive to have increased usage of the features I'm in charge of, many of which are intrinsically tied to (or superior with) location access. I don't believe that's the same as incentivizing the collection of location data, because it's not our real goal - if Apple would provide it I would absolutely love to provide users with a 'one-shot' location feature (it's probably too clumsy but the idea is when the user hits e.g. the directions button, the OS pops up a permission box and if they agree then maps gets one and only one GPS fix and then the permission is back off).
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThat's fair, I suppose. I just suspect resistance would appear from up above if anyone tried to make location access significantly less required.