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Google parental controls are basically abandonware, they function poorly and awkwardly, and don't integrate well with other products/services such as Google Hom

Google parental controls are basically abandonware, they function poorly and awkwardly, and don't integrate well with other products/services such as Google Home and Google TV. I have a dense 5 page document I wrote up detailing all of this, and I have nobody to send it to. Most of my frustrations come from the challenge of having 2 older (not toddler) kids, plus multiple Google devices (phones, tablets, Google TV's, PCs signed into Google Accounts). Google imagines parental control to be in the context of supervision, ie. this is Billy's phone and I'm going to physically hand it to him to use until he's done. And it's fundamentally device-level rather than account level, making it very cumbersome and easily circumvented -- let's say Jill has access via her account to 3 different Google TV's in the house. Family Link makes you say how much time she's allowed to spend on each TV per day. But to Jill, TV is TV, so if you leave her home alone unsupervised she'll just watch her quota on the first TV and then move on to the next. My prevailing theories, mind you I have no evidence at all for this: - These disparate product teams don't actually work closely together (and are probably incentivized to NOT work together) - These are dead-end teams at Google. If you end up on one, your goal is to nominally ship something so you can go somewhere else. - The product and engineering people who end up on the Family Link team don't actually have kids (they're too young), or if they do, they have like, one young kid.

bee_rider 3y ago
They probably realize it is hopeless to try to lock motivated kids out of their devices. And it might be a nostalgic memory for them, maybe they aren’t too motivated to implement this stuff. Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right?
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  Nostalgia time. > Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right? Devices, yes. Internet connection: not at first. With the AOL app (not a separate appliance or OS feature) responsible for establishing the dialup connection, it only bridged internet access to the OS when the current AOL user had no parental controls. As a 10-14 year old whose AOL account was set to "young teen" (DNS allow list) and then "mature teen" (DNS deny list), I was free to use non-AOL apps but they had no internet access. Solution: download a keylogger* and subsequently use a parent's AOL account for the next few years until they removed controls from mine, giving full Internet access to the whole computer, without being found out. *The free version had a "pay for this" nag popup every few minutes. I opened the exe in a hex editor, typed over that nag string, and managed to corrupt it just enough that it would crash (with a totally generic fatal error) instead of nag. Launched it right before finding mom or dad to help me do some safe but blocked activity, which they were always happy to do, with increased supervision.
- oldandboring 3y ago
  Locking kids out of a device is what Family Link excels at. You go in, you select the kid, you select the device, you click Lock. Here are things you cannot do: - Create a global screen time limit across all devices regardless of how that time is used. - Create a PIN for Google TV that prevents kids from switching to an adult account in order to access more apps. Right now it's the other way around, you can set a PIN that prevents a kid from accessing their own account (again, because supervision!) but that kid can easily switch over to the adult account if they want. - Require that when an idle Google TV exit to the 'user selection' screen after a timeout. Right now a kid can just walk up to the TV and start using my profile and apps because I was the last one to use it. As for nostalgia, I think that's overthinking it.
- monkpit 3y ago
  No, parental controls don’t drive revenue so they get abandoned. No manager type is getting promoted for creating an amazing parental control product.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    I don't see why they wouldn't, with the right marketing. Surely there's a large market of parents desiring locked-down devices for their children? It shouldn't be a hard sale.
  - astrange 3y ago
    Parental controls and enterprise management/MDM are the same product. That's important to the kind of people who'll buy hundreds of your devices. (Although they do have different fine grained features, like time limits and web site approval specifically aren't enterprise things.)
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right? Yes, but the devices could do a lot less. Like, I had full control over my bike too. But not an automobile.
- klyrs 3y ago
  > Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right? I dunno about you but we had one computer, one TV, and one phone line. If by "full control" you mean "constant negotiations" then yeah we had that. By the time I was able to drive and earn enough coin to build my own computer, I was practically an adult.
- throw10920 3y ago
  > it is hopeless to try to lock motivated kids out of their devices What? Apple's successfully made it very hard for adults to get into their own devices. This claim is absurd.
jszymborski 3y ago
Once the dust from the YouTube Ad-pocalypse settled and advertisers started spending money again, I feel like Google lost interest in a lot of child safety stuff.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  That must be when Google realized that child safety directly hurts its bottom line.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
For comparison, and as a rant to substantially agree with you.... Microsoft has e.g. actual child Hotmail accounts, where the parent can whitelist who they can email and who can contact them. Gmail does not and has no intention adding such a thing. They did eventually add child accounts as part of the Family Link effort, but there's really no controls at that level. I recall seeing internally at Google that instead of adding such facilities to Gmail, they just preferred to a) cover their eyes and pretend that <13 year olds didn't have accounts by tossing that into the agreement and asking for a birthday b) proposing some blue sky alternative communication system for children (I forget the name of this effort, but it was I think 2016ish time frame?), but it had mock-ups and hand waving and big discussions and PRDs etc but was guaranteed to go nowhere because it was a giant vision parallel to y'know... actual-reality... Microsoft also has global time limits across all devices. And far more granular control. Anyways, you're substantially right about all this. It drove me nuts that we struggled to deal with access to harmful content and had no control over it, and the worst part of it was working at Google at the time and seeing just how not--seriously this is taken or at least the level of organizational paralysis that was preventing action. Apple's system isn't much better than Google's FWIW.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  My kid (under 13 y.o.) and all her friends know that when you sign up for some online service, you always need to give a birthday such that your age is 13+. Many services are totally nerfed to the point of uselessness if you say you are under 13, and/or won't even let you sign up. Also, some companies blacklist your E-mail address if you ever say you are under 13, so you can't try to sign up as a 10 year old, realize your mistake, and then try to re-sign up with the same E-mail as a "14 year old". Consequently, circumvention techniques get around pretty quickly among the pre-teen circles.
- monkpit 3y ago
  Microsoft’s family thing is better but still not good. Simple things like adding more time or allowing purchases or adding funds with gift cards routinely fail with meaningless errors along the lines of “failed”. Or worse, a success message but there was a failure and the action doesn’t actually take effect. The moral here is all parental controls are crap because they don’t directly drive revenue. (Yes, you can say “but I would prefer to use a service with better controls, which drives adoption”, but let’s be honest - we are a minority there). Nobody’s getting promoted for making the best parental control suite.
refulgentis 3y ago
1 and 3. The quiet detente at Google is product won't be too ambitious if engineering doesn't go out of its way to do anything: 90% of the time product lays out a minimal rushed vision, engineering huffs and puffs that it might be impossible, then people work about 20-30 hours a week complaining that the designers didn't tell them exactly what to do and the teams they need to integrate with won't help, and you deliver 80-90% of the original minimal "vision" and slap eachother on the back. And that was _before_: A) spent 18 months firing people, while some managers took advantage of that situation to punch down. B) they nuked the performance review system, 80% are exactly the same with their Significant Impact, another 10-15% have scarlet letters, and 5-10% get rewards. Any deviation from that and someone perceives you as being on their turf and finds a way to punch down. And good luck getting management to care, just like the real world, no one wants to get within 100 feet of trouble. Then you're faced with the invitation to appeal to a VP, a coin flip where you have to guess at if they're going to back you, and even if they do, facing the fact you nuked your career anyway because you broke omerta.
terio 3y ago
Can you post the doc?
- oldandboring 3y ago
  Yeah I can do that. Need a couple days and I'll get it to you.
  - archon810 3y ago
    Post it publicly, and maybe even submit it to HN.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Google itself is abandonware at this point. All of their services have bugs every single day. UI feels unpolished. And God forbid you have to talk to support. Some dude in India who doesn't understand English responds through email and keeps repeating the same script.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  Even Search, the rumors are true, has really gotten worse. After hearing about it here, I did a Kagi trial and didn't hesitate to buy a year of unlimited searches when it was up. It's hard to quantify the difference but Kagi really feels like it's working with me instead of just trying to sell me garbage.
  - enormousness 3y ago
    The fact they are planning to drop the cache feature makes you wonder if Search might be heading for the Google Graveyard eventually. I know it seemed unthinkable for most of Google's history. For the longest time Search was Google. But now... We must consider the fact that Google is essentially a user data broker. All their products are in various proportions collecting user data and/or serving ads. If Search quality and features keep reducing then its usage and relevance will drop too, reducing its effectiveness at both data collecting and ad serving. I don't think Google's DNA allows them to consider radical alternatives. They were born in an era when data automation was in its infancy and they rode it all the way to the top. They abhor the human touch, the manual intervention. Their services are set to function automatically, set and forget. But AI is changing the automation landscape, it's bringing a transformative paradigm shift. It's irresistible bait for Google but it will ruin Search. They'll deal with it the only way they know how, drop it.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    Remember "I'm Feeling Lucky"? It was absolutely bananas that a search engine could be SO GOOD the first result would probably be the right one. Now the first link (and second and third) are never the right one. Usually something different entirely.
gman83 3y ago
At least with Family Link I can control everything on my kid's Android tablet from the web or my (Android) phone. My other kid has an iPad and there's nothing I can do remotely. I have to mess about with screen time codes on the device, it's a nightmare. What does Apple expect, that I'm going to buy an Iphone just to have parental controls on my kids Ipad. Why can't I do anything from icloud.com or something?
- themoonisachees 3y ago
  Yes, they do expect that. This apple's MO.

bee_rider 3y ago

They probably realize it is hopeless to try to lock motivated kids out of their devices. And it might be a nostalgic memory for them, maybe they aren’t too motivated to implement this stuff. Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right?

hunter2_ 3y ago
Nostalgia time. > Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right? Devices, yes. Internet connection: not at first. With the AOL app (not a separate appliance or OS feature) responsible for establishing the dialup connection, it only bridged internet access to the OS when the current AOL user had no parental controls. As a 10-14 year old whose AOL account was set to "young teen" (DNS allow list) and then "mature teen" (DNS deny list), I was free to use non-AOL apps but they had no internet access. Solution: download a keylogger* and subsequently use a parent's AOL account for the next few years until they removed controls from mine, giving full Internet access to the whole computer, without being found out. *The free version had a "pay for this" nag popup every few minutes. I opened the exe in a hex editor, typed over that nag string, and managed to corrupt it just enough that it would crash (with a totally generic fatal error) instead of nag. Launched it right before finding mom or dad to help me do some safe but blocked activity, which they were always happy to do, with increased supervision.
oldandboring 3y ago
Locking kids out of a device is what Family Link excels at. You go in, you select the kid, you select the device, you click Lock. Here are things you cannot do: - Create a global screen time limit across all devices regardless of how that time is used. - Create a PIN for Google TV that prevents kids from switching to an adult account in order to access more apps. Right now it's the other way around, you can set a PIN that prevents a kid from accessing their own account (again, because supervision!) but that kid can easily switch over to the adult account if they want. - Require that when an idle Google TV exit to the 'user selection' screen after a timeout. Right now a kid can just walk up to the TV and start using my profile and apps because I was the last one to use it. As for nostalgia, I think that's overthinking it.
monkpit 3y ago
No, parental controls don’t drive revenue so they get abandoned. No manager type is getting promoted for creating an amazing parental control product.
- int_19h 3y ago
  I don't see why they wouldn't, with the right marketing. Surely there's a large market of parents desiring locked-down devices for their children? It shouldn't be a hard sale.
- astrange 3y ago
  Parental controls and enterprise management/MDM are the same product. That's important to the kind of people who'll buy hundreds of your devices. (Although they do have different fine grained features, like time limits and web site approval specifically aren't enterprise things.)
paulddraper 3y ago
> Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right? Yes, but the devices could do a lot less. Like, I had full control over my bike too. But not an automobile.
klyrs 3y ago
> Most of us had full control of our devices growing up, right? I dunno about you but we had one computer, one TV, and one phone line. If by "full control" you mean "constant negotiations" then yeah we had that. By the time I was able to drive and earn enough coin to build my own computer, I was practically an adult.
throw10920 3y ago
> it is hopeless to try to lock motivated kids out of their devices What? Apple's successfully made it very hard for adults to get into their own devices. This claim is absurd.

jszymborski 3y ago

Once the dust from the YouTube Ad-pocalypse settled and advertisers started spending money again, I feel like Google lost interest in a lot of child safety stuff.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
That must be when Google realized that child safety directly hurts its bottom line.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

For comparison, and as a rant to substantially agree with you.... Microsoft has e.g. actual child Hotmail accounts, where the parent can whitelist who they can email and who can contact them. Gmail does not and has no intention adding such a thing. They did eventually add child accounts as part of the Family Link effort, but there's really no controls at that level. I recall seeing internally at Google that instead of adding such facilities to Gmail, they just preferred to a) cover their eyes and pretend that <13 year olds didn't have accounts by tossing that into the agreement and asking for a birthday b) proposing some blue sky alternative communication system for children (I forget the name of this effort, but it was I think 2016ish time frame?), but it had mock-ups and hand waving and big discussions and PRDs etc but was guaranteed to go nowhere because it was a giant vision parallel to y'know... actual-reality... Microsoft also has global time limits across all devices. And far more granular control. Anyways, you're substantially right about all this. It drove me nuts that we struggled to deal with access to harmful content and had no control over it, and the worst part of it was working at Google at the time and seeing just how not--seriously this is taken or at least the level of organizational paralysis that was preventing action. Apple's system isn't much better than Google's FWIW.

ryandrake 3y ago
My kid (under 13 y.o.) and all her friends know that when you sign up for some online service, you always need to give a birthday such that your age is 13+. Many services are totally nerfed to the point of uselessness if you say you are under 13, and/or won't even let you sign up. Also, some companies blacklist your E-mail address if you ever say you are under 13, so you can't try to sign up as a 10 year old, realize your mistake, and then try to re-sign up with the same E-mail as a "14 year old". Consequently, circumvention techniques get around pretty quickly among the pre-teen circles.
monkpit 3y ago
Microsoft’s family thing is better but still not good. Simple things like adding more time or allowing purchases or adding funds with gift cards routinely fail with meaningless errors along the lines of “failed”. Or worse, a success message but there was a failure and the action doesn’t actually take effect. The moral here is all parental controls are crap because they don’t directly drive revenue. (Yes, you can say “but I would prefer to use a service with better controls, which drives adoption”, but let’s be honest - we are a minority there). Nobody’s getting promoted for making the best parental control suite.

refulgentis 3y ago

1 and 3. The quiet detente at Google is product won't be too ambitious if engineering doesn't go out of its way to do anything: 90% of the time product lays out a minimal rushed vision, engineering huffs and puffs that it might be impossible, then people work about 20-30 hours a week complaining that the designers didn't tell them exactly what to do and the teams they need to integrate with won't help, and you deliver 80-90% of the original minimal "vision" and slap eachother on the back. And that was _before_: A) spent 18 months firing people, while some managers took advantage of that situation to punch down. B) they nuked the performance review system, 80% are exactly the same with their Significant Impact, another 10-15% have scarlet letters, and 5-10% get rewards. Any deviation from that and someone perceives you as being on their turf and finds a way to punch down. And good luck getting management to care, just like the real world, no one wants to get within 100 feet of trouble. Then you're faced with the invitation to appeal to a VP, a coin flip where you have to guess at if they're going to back you, and even if they do, facing the fact you nuked your career anyway because you broke omerta.

terio 3y ago

Can you post the doc?

oldandboring 3y ago
Yeah I can do that. Need a couple days and I'll get it to you.
- archon810 3y ago
  Post it publicly, and maybe even submit it to HN.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Google itself is abandonware at this point. All of their services have bugs every single day. UI feels unpolished. And God forbid you have to talk to support. Some dude in India who doesn't understand English responds through email and keeps repeating the same script.

dingnuts 3y ago
Even Search, the rumors are true, has really gotten worse. After hearing about it here, I did a Kagi trial and didn't hesitate to buy a year of unlimited searches when it was up. It's hard to quantify the difference but Kagi really feels like it's working with me instead of just trying to sell me garbage.
- enormousness 3y ago
  The fact they are planning to drop the cache feature makes you wonder if Search might be heading for the Google Graveyard eventually. I know it seemed unthinkable for most of Google's history. For the longest time Search was Google. But now... We must consider the fact that Google is essentially a user data broker. All their products are in various proportions collecting user data and/or serving ads. If Search quality and features keep reducing then its usage and relevance will drop too, reducing its effectiveness at both data collecting and ad serving. I don't think Google's DNA allows them to consider radical alternatives. They were born in an era when data automation was in its infancy and they rode it all the way to the top. They abhor the human touch, the manual intervention. Their services are set to function automatically, set and forget. But AI is changing the automation landscape, it's bringing a transformative paradigm shift. It's irresistible bait for Google but it will ruin Search. They'll deal with it the only way they know how, drop it.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Remember "I'm Feeling Lucky"? It was absolutely bananas that a search engine could be SO GOOD the first result would probably be the right one. Now the first link (and second and third) are never the right one. Usually something different entirely.

gman83 3y ago

At least with Family Link I can control everything on my kid's Android tablet from the web or my (Android) phone. My other kid has an iPad and there's nothing I can do remotely. I have to mess about with screen time codes on the device, it's a nightmare. What does Apple expect, that I'm going to buy an Iphone just to have parental controls on my kids Ipad. Why can't I do anything from icloud.com or something?

themoonisachees 3y ago
Yes, they do expect that. This apple's MO.