15 ms·

Google will discontinue its Trusted Contacts app in December

114 points by laktak 6y ago

thomasfl 6y ago
If you are helping someone, and expect something in return, you are doing business, not kindness. Google executives are probably not so popular if they are doing kindness, not business.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > If you are helping someone, and expect something in return, you are doing business, not kindness. No, if you are helping someone because you expect something in return, you are doing business.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Google executives are probably not so popular if they are doing kindness.. They could just call it 'marketing' like all the other companies who do things for ambiguous returns.
- yunruse 6y ago
  Even if you remove all the heart from it, kindness is great for PR. Even a small thing, if it provides help to a small set of users in their time of need, will encourage loyal customers. Alas Google knows it already has people’s loyalty, so it can afford to care far less
pm90 6y ago
Smells like a reorg where the app team was culled and it’s features moved to the maps team.
gundmc 6y ago
Makes sense to have this sort of thing be part of the Maps app, but incredibly frustrating to stop short of actual feature parity.
- hackmiester 6y ago
  I would go so far as to say that they didn’t even bother implementing any of it. The location sharing stuff was implemented without this in mind, completely unrelated to this type of feature set. To say they “stopped short” would imply they had started.
ortusdux 6y ago
Somehow my FIL has managed to setup his phone to not only always share his location with me, but to also alert me anytime he starts a google maps navigation. I get both a gmaps alert and an email each time. He is retired, so I mainly fishing trips, but next time I see him in person I need figure out how he set that up and to make sure he wants that 'feature' enabled.
- modeless 6y ago
  It automatically emails you every month to remind you who you are sharing your location with, so hopefully he's seen that. I didn't know you could set up notifications for navigation though. They used to have commute notifications but I thought those got removed.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    He might be manually sharing his route with you every time, perhaps because he thinks you might be interested where he's off to today...
    - dspillett 6y ago
      Or he is "filing a flight-plan" in case he has a trip and needs rescuing if you don't hear from him later. I know some fell runners who leave a copy of their route plans with a friend before heading out for similar "just-in-case" reasons, especially when going somewhere remote with particularly tricky terrain.
    - zaphirplane 6y ago
      Obviously preparing an alibi:)
- renewiltord 6y ago
  That second one sounds like it's manual. I've never been able to automate that. What would be cool if any time I pick a contact in Google Maps to navigate to, it would "share my progress" with them too.
ageofwant 6y ago
Joke's on you if you trust Google with anything important. Google's penchant to abandon projects is well recorded here and elsewhere. Google sells ads, they are a advertising company. Everything else is just some kids' side project that gets ditched the moment said kid loses interest.
- numlock86 6y ago
  And which kid exactly are they ditching according to your analogy here? The features find their way into another app of the same provider ... or rather, they have been there for quite some time already.
  - llp100 6y ago
    None? The message clearly says that a side project is being ditched, not the kid.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
michaelbrooks 6y ago
I've slowly made the switch, and I quite like being able to see my wife on both the desktop and app versions of Google Maps. I do wish it had messaging features, and geofencing alerts would be a huge bonus so I can be alerted when she arrives at a location safely. I also think there needs to be some Nest integrations so I can ask "Where is X?" or "How far is X" and it would say "X is currently 10 minutes away from your location". I guess what they have is a good start, but I really hope they can push the tech further to make it even more useful than what it is at current.
- kace91 6y ago
  I wasn't aware of the feature, but it sounds... a bit worrying, frankly. Not for your use case I'm sure, nor for the majority of people, but I can see how it can be used in cases of abusive relationships to establish control.
  - fyfy18 6y ago
    I may be wrong as I switched a few years ago... but as I remember Find my Friends on iOS had all these features.
    - mvanbaak 6y ago
      It's called 'findmy' now, and yet, it has all this. And it works with their watch and notebook as well, not just phone.
  - nefitty 6y ago
    This is a valid concern. I may be speaking from a place of privilege, but does it really make sense to curtail innovation because a small set of people might use a technology for nefarious purposes?
    - kace91 6y ago
      how would you define innovation? I would argue that technology that is better designed to make nefarious purposes harder to achieve, rather than just dumping features onto the user, is innovative. User protection is also a feature, one that's usually way more valuable than convenience but that we only appreciate when it's gone and it's too late. It's not necessarily a matter of privilege, we're all potentially at the risk of having an account hijacked by a rando, or having a device stolen, or having a relationship go sideways to a crazy point.
fen4o 6y ago
https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- numlock86 6y ago
  Claiming AngularJS got killed by Google (or rather will be) because they redesigned and at the same time renamed it to just Angular and stop working on an old LTS release? That's not how any of this works.
  - netfl0 6y ago
    Out of the over 200 things listed, are there others you take issue with besides angular?
    - duhast 6y ago
      The Google Graveyard is a Myth: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/hximz7/the_google_graveyard_is_a_myth/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/hximz7/the_google_g...
      - corobo 6y ago
        > The reality is that, when a lot of people claim Google kills all its products, what they really mean is something like: "Google canceled Google Reader, and I still don't forgive them." This and the rest is a fair comment. Thank you for linking it. I'll personally be getting off the Google kills everything bandwagon (I'll stay on the Google is creepy as fuck bandwagon but that's unrelated)
        robertlagrant 6y ago
        A couple of their examples at least seem a bit off - apparently Youtube Music isn't as good as the previous one, and Wave, while incorporated a bit into their office products, lacks the central feature that made Wave Wave.
pjmlp 6y ago
I keep waiting for the day they announce discontinuing Android or Chrome OS (Web =~= Chrome), or even both, because it is bound to happen, even if not right away.
- vl 6y ago
  It’s kind of schizophrenic for a company to have two, quite similar, OSes. For years there was a project to bring Android apps to Chrome OS. The question is, of course, is why have Chrome OS at all. The answer is that there was a conflict between two top-level executives: Sundar and Rubin. Thus two OSes from the same company. We all know who won in the end.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    "For years there was a project to bring Android apps to Chrome OS." This currently ships and is heavily marketed as well.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Indeed, but with various levels of "works", depending on the Chromebook model and apps that were never meant to support tablets, let alone laptops.
    - vl 6y ago
      My point is that they should bite the bullet and ditch Chrome OS altogether. Android already works on tablets, which are nowadays very similar to laptops. And this move will bring first-class app and store support to Chromebooks.
      - mav3rick 6y ago
        Chrome OS is faster and has way less bloat than Android. It also has Crostini now which has gained momentum with developers
        6y ago
homero 6y ago
Never seen this app, I remember using Latitude before they killed it
kesor 6y ago
Google are definitely behaving according to expectations. Once upon a time it was expected of them to create great apps and technologies. Today it is expected of them to kill whatever new thing happens to appear from that company. So they are definitely living up to what is expected of them.
sudhirkhanger 6y ago
What's the impact of sharing live-location via Google Maps on the device's battery?
- estebank 6y ago
  I would guess none, because Google Maps already uploads your position to Google for other use cases on a regular cadence. The only difference I can see is that when looking at the map and clicking on the other person's pin, the location gets immediately updated (within a few seconds), so that's the only extra battery usage.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    This is assuming that you allow Google maps to access your location in the background always. I would imagine that most people have it set to allow only when using.
    - mosselman 6y ago
      Google has been known to track user location even when they’ve opted out. So let’s not assume anything about google.
- afiori 6y ago
  based on my experience the only change is that contact can remotely ask your phone to refresh its location (the app will let you ask for a refresh only if the last known location is al least ~3 minutes old). For the rest it just shares the last location google already knows of.
tokamak-teapot 6y ago
I let my phone share my location with my partner in case of emergency. The kind where I’ve gone on a long drive and something has happened, I need help, and I’m unable to access my phone and pass on my location myself. It’s not a particularly likely scenario but nice to have the backup in case of that or something else I haven’t imagined. I’m considering switching this off, though, because several times they’ve used it to just look up where I am because they’re being nosey. There is always a reason given, but being able to give a reason doesn’t make something legit. This just feels creepy and I’ve pointed this out, yet they keep doing it - and perhaps without my knowledge sometimes too. Now I feel like if I turn it off then it’ll look like I have something to hide, but that’s okay. That feeling is massively outweighed by the desire not to be followed around. My phone provider and probably several government agencies are doing that already. At least they don’t send me messages asking if I’m planning to leave work soon.
mvanbaak 6y ago
Every time I wonder when it will finally read: Google will discontinue. FULL STOP I'll just keep on dreaming.

114 points by laktak 6y ago

If you are helping someone, and expect something in return, you are doing business, not kindness. Google executives are probably not so popular if they are doing kindness, not business.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> If you are helping someone, and expect something in return, you are doing business, not kindness. No, if you are helping someone because you expect something in return, you are doing business.
onion2k 6y ago
Google executives are probably not so popular if they are doing kindness.. They could just call it 'marketing' like all the other companies who do things for ambiguous returns.
yunruse 6y ago
Even if you remove all the heart from it, kindness is great for PR. Even a small thing, if it provides help to a small set of users in their time of need, will encourage loyal customers. Alas Google knows it already has people’s loyalty, so it can afford to care far less

pm90 6y ago

Smells like a reorg where the app team was culled and it’s features moved to the maps team.

gundmc 6y ago

Makes sense to have this sort of thing be part of the Maps app, but incredibly frustrating to stop short of actual feature parity.

hackmiester 6y ago
I would go so far as to say that they didn’t even bother implementing any of it. The location sharing stuff was implemented without this in mind, completely unrelated to this type of feature set. To say they “stopped short” would imply they had started.

ortusdux 6y ago

Somehow my FIL has managed to setup his phone to not only always share his location with me, but to also alert me anytime he starts a google maps navigation. I get both a gmaps alert and an email each time. He is retired, so I mainly fishing trips, but next time I see him in person I need figure out how he set that up and to make sure he wants that 'feature' enabled.

modeless 6y ago
It automatically emails you every month to remind you who you are sharing your location with, so hopefully he's seen that. I didn't know you could set up notifications for navigation though. They used to have commute notifications but I thought those got removed.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  He might be manually sharing his route with you every time, perhaps because he thinks you might be interested where he's off to today...
  - dspillett 6y ago
    Or he is "filing a flight-plan" in case he has a trip and needs rescuing if you don't hear from him later. I know some fell runners who leave a copy of their route plans with a friend before heading out for similar "just-in-case" reasons, especially when going somewhere remote with particularly tricky terrain.
  - zaphirplane 6y ago
    Obviously preparing an alibi:)
renewiltord 6y ago
That second one sounds like it's manual. I've never been able to automate that. What would be cool if any time I pick a contact in Google Maps to navigate to, it would "share my progress" with them too.

ageofwant 6y ago

Joke's on you if you trust Google with anything important. Google's penchant to abandon projects is well recorded here and elsewhere. Google sells ads, they are a advertising company. Everything else is just some kids' side project that gets ditched the moment said kid loses interest.

numlock86 6y ago
And which kid exactly are they ditching according to your analogy here? The features find their way into another app of the same provider ... or rather, they have been there for quite some time already.
- llp100 6y ago
  None? The message clearly says that a side project is being ditched, not the kid.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

michaelbrooks 6y ago

I've slowly made the switch, and I quite like being able to see my wife on both the desktop and app versions of Google Maps. I do wish it had messaging features, and geofencing alerts would be a huge bonus so I can be alerted when she arrives at a location safely. I also think there needs to be some Nest integrations so I can ask "Where is X?" or "How far is X" and it would say "X is currently 10 minutes away from your location". I guess what they have is a good start, but I really hope they can push the tech further to make it even more useful than what it is at current.

kace91 6y ago
I wasn't aware of the feature, but it sounds... a bit worrying, frankly. Not for your use case I'm sure, nor for the majority of people, but I can see how it can be used in cases of abusive relationships to establish control.
- fyfy18 6y ago
  I may be wrong as I switched a few years ago... but as I remember Find my Friends on iOS had all these features.
  - mvanbaak 6y ago
    It's called 'findmy' now, and yet, it has all this. And it works with their watch and notebook as well, not just phone.
- nefitty 6y ago
  This is a valid concern. I may be speaking from a place of privilege, but does it really make sense to curtail innovation because a small set of people might use a technology for nefarious purposes?
  - kace91 6y ago
    how would you define innovation? I would argue that technology that is better designed to make nefarious purposes harder to achieve, rather than just dumping features onto the user, is innovative. User protection is also a feature, one that's usually way more valuable than convenience but that we only appreciate when it's gone and it's too late. It's not necessarily a matter of privilege, we're all potentially at the risk of having an account hijacked by a rando, or having a device stolen, or having a relationship go sideways to a crazy point.

fen4o 6y ago

https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/

numlock86 6y ago
Claiming AngularJS got killed by Google (or rather will be) because they redesigned and at the same time renamed it to just Angular and stop working on an old LTS release? That's not how any of this works.
- netfl0 6y ago
  Out of the over 200 things listed, are there others you take issue with besides angular?
  - duhast 6y ago
    The Google Graveyard is a Myth: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/hximz7/the_google_graveyard_is_a_myth/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/hximz7/the_google_g...
    - corobo 6y ago
      > The reality is that, when a lot of people claim Google kills all its products, what they really mean is something like: "Google canceled Google Reader, and I still don't forgive them." This and the rest is a fair comment. Thank you for linking it. I'll personally be getting off the Google kills everything bandwagon (I'll stay on the Google is creepy as fuck bandwagon but that's unrelated)
      - robertlagrant 6y ago
        A couple of their examples at least seem a bit off - apparently Youtube Music isn't as good as the previous one, and Wave, while incorporated a bit into their office products, lacks the central feature that made Wave Wave.

pjmlp 6y ago

I keep waiting for the day they announce discontinuing Android or Chrome OS (Web =~= Chrome), or even both, because it is bound to happen, even if not right away.

vl 6y ago
It’s kind of schizophrenic for a company to have two, quite similar, OSes. For years there was a project to bring Android apps to Chrome OS. The question is, of course, is why have Chrome OS at all. The answer is that there was a conflict between two top-level executives: Sundar and Rubin. Thus two OSes from the same company. We all know who won in the end.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  "For years there was a project to bring Android apps to Chrome OS." This currently ships and is heavily marketed as well.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Indeed, but with various levels of "works", depending on the Chromebook model and apps that were never meant to support tablets, let alone laptops.
  - vl 6y ago
    My point is that they should bite the bullet and ditch Chrome OS altogether. Android already works on tablets, which are nowadays very similar to laptops. And this move will bring first-class app and store support to Chromebooks.
    - mav3rick 6y ago
      Chrome OS is faster and has way less bloat than Android. It also has Crostini now which has gained momentum with developers
      - 6y ago

homero 6y ago

Never seen this app, I remember using Latitude before they killed it

kesor 6y ago

Google are definitely behaving according to expectations. Once upon a time it was expected of them to create great apps and technologies. Today it is expected of them to kill whatever new thing happens to appear from that company. So they are definitely living up to what is expected of them.

sudhirkhanger 6y ago

What's the impact of sharing live-location via Google Maps on the device's battery?

estebank 6y ago
I would guess none, because Google Maps already uploads your position to Google for other use cases on a regular cadence. The only difference I can see is that when looking at the map and clicking on the other person's pin, the location gets immediately updated (within a few seconds), so that's the only extra battery usage.
- Spivak 6y ago
  This is assuming that you allow Google maps to access your location in the background always. I would imagine that most people have it set to allow only when using.
  - mosselman 6y ago
    Google has been known to track user location even when they’ve opted out. So let’s not assume anything about google.
afiori 6y ago
based on my experience the only change is that contact can remotely ask your phone to refresh its location (the app will let you ask for a refresh only if the last known location is al least ~3 minutes old). For the rest it just shares the last location google already knows of.

tokamak-teapot 6y ago

I let my phone share my location with my partner in case of emergency. The kind where I’ve gone on a long drive and something has happened, I need help, and I’m unable to access my phone and pass on my location myself. It’s not a particularly likely scenario but nice to have the backup in case of that or something else I haven’t imagined. I’m considering switching this off, though, because several times they’ve used it to just look up where I am because they’re being nosey. There is always a reason given, but being able to give a reason doesn’t make something legit. This just feels creepy and I’ve pointed this out, yet they keep doing it - and perhaps without my knowledge sometimes too. Now I feel like if I turn it off then it’ll look like I have something to hide, but that’s okay. That feeling is massively outweighed by the desire not to be followed around. My phone provider and probably several government agencies are doing that already. At least they don’t send me messages asking if I’m planning to leave work soon.

mvanbaak 6y ago

Every time I wonder when it will finally read: Google will discontinue. FULL STOP I'll just keep on dreaming.