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Yeah Google deliberately lies. That's why they're being sued by the state of Arizona, for willfully deceiving users and tracking their locations even if they op

Yeah Google deliberately lies. That's why they're being sued by the state of Arizona, for willfully deceiving users and tracking their locations even if they opted out. [1] They said "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored" and then did it anyways. Apple, for its part, says "Apple doesn’t retain a history of what you’ve searched for or where you’ve been" and there's no reason to doubt it. 1: https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mark-brnovich-files-lawsuit-against-google-over-deceptive-and-unfair https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mark-brn...

actuator 6y ago
> They said "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored" and then did it anyways. I would just apply Hanlon's razor here. It most likely was a bug or oversight, if it had been some malicious evil scheme, I would assume more care would have been taken so that people don't find out. Now, coming to the question of why do they even store it for opted in users? Aside from potential ad relevance, I think it is simply because they power a lot of their features with context and they get better with data. For example, if you search cheesecake on Google, the answer likely will be either a recipe or a restaurant. A restaurant search will likely be helped by data about previous visits and current location. A recipe search will be helped by past search result clicks and again location. Do they really need to store this to serve search results? I don't think so. DDG works without them, but then again DDG performs very poor for queries like this which can be helped with context. Note: I don't know how any of this exactly works, so these are just my assumptions.
- millstone 6y ago
  "Willfully misleads and deceives" is verbatim from the lawsuit. IANAL but that sounds like "deliberately lies" to me. From the lawsuit: for years, Google has known that the user experience they designed misleads and deceives users. The evidence obtained from within Google—such as internal emails, presentations, and memos—is overwhelming in this regard They knew that they were deceiving users, and liked it that way. An example of of how Google uses this data: Google will track if you click an ad for Cheesecake Factory and later physically visit one. This allows them to charge higher rates for ads. This isn't a secret, they brag about that capability. It's why they use so many dark patterns to push users to enable location tracking. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en

actuator 6y ago

> They said "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored" and then did it anyways. I would just apply Hanlon's razor here. It most likely was a bug or oversight, if it had been some malicious evil scheme, I would assume more care would have been taken so that people don't find out. Now, coming to the question of why do they even store it for opted in users? Aside from potential ad relevance, I think it is simply because they power a lot of their features with context and they get better with data. For example, if you search cheesecake on Google, the answer likely will be either a recipe or a restaurant. A restaurant search will likely be helped by data about previous visits and current location. A recipe search will be helped by past search result clicks and again location. Do they really need to store this to serve search results? I don't think so. DDG works without them, but then again DDG performs very poor for queries like this which can be helped with context. Note: I don't know how any of this exactly works, so these are just my assumptions.

millstone 6y ago
"Willfully misleads and deceives" is verbatim from the lawsuit. IANAL but that sounds like "deliberately lies" to me. From the lawsuit: for years, Google has known that the user experience they designed misleads and deceives users. The evidence obtained from within Google—such as internal emails, presentations, and memos—is overwhelming in this regard They knew that they were deceiving users, and liked it that way. An example of of how Google uses this data: Google will track if you click an ad for Cheesecake Factory and later physically visit one. This allows them to charge higher rates for ads. This isn't a secret, they brag about that capability. It's why they use so many dark patterns to push users to enable location tracking. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en