> The Court ruled that when consumers created a new Google Account during the initial set-up process of their Android device, Google misrepresented that the ‘Location History’ setting was the only Google Account setting that affected whether Google collected, kept or used personally identifiable data about their location. In fact, another Google Account setting titled ‘Web & App Activity’ also enabled Google to collect, store and use personally identifiable location data when it was turned on, and that setting was turned on by default.
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The Court also found that when consumers later accessed the ‘Location History’ setting on their Android device during the same time period to turn that setting off, they were also misled because Google did not inform them that by leaving the ‘Web & App Activity’ setting switched on, Google would continue to collect, store and use their personally identifiable location data.
the Guardian coverage is less editorialized. Here's the judge's actual words:
“Google’s conduct would not have misled all reasonable users in the classes identified; but Google’s conduct misled or was likely to mislead some reasonable users within the particular classes identified.
“The number or proportion of reasonable users who were misled, or were likely to have been misled, does not matter for the purposes of establishing contravention.”
> To use home and work when you search or use directions, you must turn on Web & App Activity. If can't find home and work in Maps, learn how to turn on Web & App Activity.
Another fun limitation - apparently for my Pixel phone to remember I prefer my temperature in Celsius, Google also needs "Web & App Activity" tracking. In other words Google wants my whole location history when using Google apps just to remember my preferred units.
I have worked for some insanely political companies and this just made me laugh. That’s a genius application of a dark pattern/malicious compliance “nudge.”
I hate that companies that work this way are some of the biggest and most powerful on the planet, but it’s also darkly funny if your humor runs to Kafka or Dante...
Indded it feels like that. It's like you are paying with your data and here is where you choose the plan you want. Oh, you don't want the pro plan but would rather the free plan? It has less features.
Are you sure you want Google to have definitive answers for “Work” and “Home”? I know they already infer it by tracking overnight location; but
- When I type “Ho” in GMaps it will first suggest all businesses — “Ho... Home Depot? House Garden? Horror House (375km)?” then cities (“Ho... Chi Minh City, Vietnam?”) and, after many tries, “Home”, the real.
- I had Web Activity and Location History registered, in France but English with a address for “Home”,
- I was using it for every return trip; They could have suggested by default without typing anything; Clearly they optimize to promote businesses or other usecases first, not convenience.
- I ended up putting a Label “XKDJF” on my home, which is more convenient (until a city starts with “XK” – hoping Elon Musk will not name a city on Mars this year).
> Are you sure you want Google to have definitive answers for “Work” and “Home”? I know they already infer it by tracking overnight location; but
I would say the root problem is that supplying any information to a Google app is by default assumed to mean "This should be uploaded to a persistent profile of user data."
They could just let me set a Home and Work location on my phone and leave that data on my phone (regardless of tracking preferences), or they could store it in a more private mechanism with a key that lives on your device (see Chrome bookmark sync), but they choose to not do any of that.
Yeah, I really hate that. One workaround is to temporarily turn on the setting, set your home and work locations, then immediately turn it back off again. It will keep the locations and allow you to use them, you just can't change them unless you turn the Web & App activity setting back on again.
Which is why I wish Microsoft would release an updated Windows Phone 10. I know it never captured "mind share", but find someone that actually used Windows Phone for over a year as their main phone, and ask them how it was. My son and I each had Nokia phones running Windows phone, as "insiders" updated to Windows Phone 10. The UI was actually quite nice. The lack of apps is what hurt it, though Here maps was pretty good.
Windows Mobile was the pinnacle of the smartphone experience.
The release of the iPhone imo was the Eternal September of the mobile experience in so far as it was the tipping point wherein a demographic of users who didn't even need to be convinced that yielding full and openly adversarial control over the hardware to the network operators and advertisers became an uncontested majority.
They came with a text editor, a calculator, and a file browser out of the box -- can this generation even imagine not having to run the app store gauntlet of monetization and fraud to Open Files, I wonder?
What use cases does "opening files" have which isn't addressed by iPhone's built-in apps and at the same time doesn't involve any risk of using a random third party app that has to be sourced from somewhere like an app store?
A file system isn't the greatest design from a security standpoint, but the Apple model is particularly limiting if, for instance, you want a library of data to be available to one app, and then later available to another app. You'll notice the iPhone cheats in this regard, by providing generic system libraries for photos and contacts, but if you say, have an ebook library, and want to switch reader apps, you'll have a bad time.
It would probably be better to have a system of secure file buckets, where you could create them arbitrarily and choose to allow access to any bucket to any app, rather than permit open access to the file system as Android traditionally has done.
It would be nice if directories would allow you (via metadata?) to add an App to allowed "apps" on a per app basis, or at least let you create such a folder so that you would have to interact and opt in apps. Most users would never need it but power users certainly could use something like that.
The Cartesian product of the set of all use cases of file storage excluding those for which the iPhone does include an app; and the set of all methods that distribute the content of an app with verifiable authenticity and authorship excluding all methods which are "like an app store"
You can get a good app from an original developer using an appstore. The problem you described is not that genuine developers cannot share their apps, it's that users are taken in by fake apps pretending to be genuine.
If it was the norm to download a signed binary from a random website, random websites looking genuine and offering genuine fake signed binaries would be the norm. "Are you sure you want to install Adobee PhotoShop? (Signature verified!)"
"No mom, Adobe PhotoShop!"
"I have Abobe PhotoShop, Adode PhotoShop, Ádobe PhotoShop, PhotoStop by Adobe"
I second this. The apps that were missing for me are the ones I don't use anyway. I want navigation, a phone, text messaging, and a browser without having to disable preinstalled facebook services and other stuff I have been "gifted" by purchasing.
I share the love of Windows Phone 10, but as someone who (used to, before Covid) travel around Europe, the lack of apps really hurt access to public transport and even some cultural experiences (museum companion apps). HERE Maps was also way behind on public transport data for anything outside major capitals.
Nothing comes close to Windows Phone usability. Not even today. Just turning Do Not Disturb on Android on or off is more frustrating than threading a needle. I wish they'd bring it back.
Hmm, on my iPhone, I swipe down from the top right corner and tap on the moon icon to turn do not disturb on or off. Maybe it's not that Windows Phone was so great but that Android is not so good?
Many people are fighting phone addiction. Rich people want their kids off the grid. Lacking apps could be a feature in a more mature market.
Rich people could display wealth (better the children not be seen with a crappy phone) with a great UX, while at the same time being exempt from the dopamine addiction. Now that we know what we pretty much do on a phone, we could create a phone with all main apps hard-coded and it would fulfill the necessary needs.
I loved my Windows Phone. What MS lacked was _persistence_. They should have waited another 2-3 years and folks fed up of Apple/Google would have moved to them.
The same Microsoft that hides the option to set up a computer with a local user account (instead of an online Microsoft account) unless you turn off networking during setup?
The google agreement seems to break the "reasonable person" aspect of laws that I learned in college. It's not reasonable to have more than one place to shut off geolocation/tracking and the court decided this in the obvious way. Google should be fined heavily for such evil bait-and-switch tactics. Not only are they not avoiding "evil" they're embracing it the past decade or so.
I assume it would be whatever you gave the specific app. If you search for "weather in [your city]", they might get either that or ip data. If you share your GPS to get your weather, then they get that.
Unlike Location History, which is a specific feature that keeps a history of your location, Web & Apps activity is just that, activity from Google websites and apps. Said activity may include location data depending on the app or website.
This is a gross mischaracterization of what occurred, of the level of falsehood that Google itself is being punished for:
"That isn't true. Even with “location history” paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.
For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, such as “chocolate chip cookies” or “kids science kits”, pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude accurate to the square foot and save it to your Google account."
Yes, Web and App Activity both includes location data still collected despite Maps being told not to, or when obviously-location-specific information like Weather is being retrieved, but also when unrelated searches are made for ad targeting purposes. Basically, every unrelated bloody app would collect your location, and since your Google phone is running 20 some-odd Google services, they still had a pretty good location history, even when your location history was completely off.
> For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, such as “chocolate chip cookies” or “kids science kits”, pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude accurate to the square foot and save it to your Google account.
Obviously, if you open Maps and you've given the app location permission, it'll get your location. Similarly, if you have weather enabled, it'll regularly update to not become stale. Searches for products is a bit more subtle, I agree, but your browser also asks for location access per site, so you simply can refuse to give it for Google search.
Each of these is connected to a specific feature you're using, it's not just constantly pinging your location for the sake of your location. Each ping is specifically for a service you're using.
The real issue here is the fact that "Web & Apps activity" didn't explicitly mention location, and it happened to be next to this other feature named "Location History", and this juxtaposition implied that the former didn't collect location. That's it, that's the only issue here, and since 2018 thye've fixed it by adding "this might include location data" to Web & Apps activity.
GETTING my location for a map is one thing STORING my location is quite another. Also, I might want to use map to search for where OTHER things are - I don't need to display my current location to search for "a map of Topeka Kansas".
Also, for the weather app specifically, there was a weather app that retrieved your location every 30 seconds (to give you up to date info) - and then promptly sold that data to advertisers. Just because the weather app "needs to poll my location", doesn't mean it should get fine-grained access every 4 hours.
Oh, also, something I learned when I wrote an app for android.
In order for me to use the GPS chip on the cell phone, I needed to: use Google's API, send the phone information (you know, so they could log who was looking at the GPS and where they were); this MANDATED an updated version of the play store.
So if there is some 3rd party app that "you totally trust with your location" - Google is getting that data, too.
What you wrote is highly misleading - the Location API does not need Play Services on Android to work.
You explicitly decided to choose the Google cloud driven API that's hosted in Play Services and thus requires Play Services (and not Play Store!) updates. You didn't have to.
> The Court ruled that when consumers created a new Google Account during the initial set-up process of their Android device, Google misrepresented that the ‘Location History’ setting was the only Google Account setting that affected whether Google collected, kept or used personally identifiable data about their location. In fact, another Google Account setting titled ‘Web & App Activity’ also enabled Google to collect, store and use personally identifiable location data when it was turned on, and that setting was turned on by default.
> The Court also found that when consumers later accessed the ‘Location History’ setting on their Android device during the same time period to turn that setting off, they were also misled because Google did not inform them that by leaving the ‘Web & App Activity’ setting switched on, Google would continue to collect, store and use their personally identifiable location data.