And 14 years later there still "is no evidence or even reason to suspect that Google is not being an honest broker. The searches give good results, the rankings seem fair, the service remains free, and we haven’t heard of anyone being arrested for running a dodgy query."
So while the author is right about potential dangers mentioned in the penultimate paragraph, it's been more than a decade and those fears haven't really materialized. The article sounds exactly like things that are being said in anti-Google threads in 2014.
Uhmmm, nearly everything he described became a reality. Personalized search results, mass data gathering, filtering / censorship of results, the growth of Google to megalithic proportions ('next Microsoft'), etc.
What is wrong with HN that simple questions with no obvious agenda are getting downvotes? It's becoming impossible to have even a simple conversation here any more.
(sorry, yes, rant ..., and far more deserving of downvotes than the parent)
Not to open up a whole other can of worms here, but I've heard people blame Reddit for an influx of downvote brigade types.
Regardless of where they're coming from, I know what you mean. I wish at the very least we'd see more questions or rebuttals or whatever being replied to the posters.
New people (I am one of them as you will see if you go to my page) do not have the ability to down vote. From what I understand, the assumption is that by the time people get to the magic number (currently 500 I believe), they will have been here long enough to understand what to down vote.
I'd say the best recourse we have available is to set showdead to yes. I think it is quite obvious that we are not supposed to down vote things just because we disagree.
I can imagine a system like stack overflow where down voting a top level comment takes away like a tenth of a point from the down voter so if the down voter does nothing but down vote, they'll ultimately lose the privilege.
Aside from the fact that Google doesn't have much choice WRT to DMCA and it's the US government fault, there's this funny thing about ChillingEffect that it doesn't really censor that much.
For instance, let me search for "Edge of Tomorrow full movie". At the bottom of the page I can see that some results were removed due to DMCA request. There's a link to the complaint:
Thanks for the Wikipedia link. There are many intersting cases I haven't heard about. But my general impression is that Google is not giving in to censorship requests easily and try to go around them in any way possible. See the DMCA "censored results" that are available one click away at ChillingEffects.
As for "Right to be forgotten", I'm happy to see they're fighting it in whatever way they can.
I'm not saying Google is crystal clear. I just don't see obvious signs of malice that is often attributed to it by people here.
Perhaps not yet but they have amassed all the data the author describes and much more.
For example, I just drove half way across the UK. Google knows that because I was using Google maps.
I stopped at Pizza Hut. Google knows that.
I stopped at a BP garage. Google knows that.
I searched for houses in an area in the UK via right move. Google knows that because the embedded map knows my Google cookie...
And so forth...
Now I'm not saying they have done any evil but perhaps it's fair to consider that the past doesn't always hold true in the future and by then you've already hung yourself.
Edit: why down vote facts? Someone work at Google?
Google doesn't specifically know you stopped at Pizza Hut or the BP garage. It uses coarse location (GPS being too taxing on battery to get constant location updates) which has an accuracy of 100+ meters. So it would know you stopped somewhere around the Pizza Hut, but not specifically that you went inside. Could have just as easily gone to the Tesco next door.
Actually yes it does know I stopped at both of those location.
1. The BP garage has a wireless AP with a known SSID to them. Location services uses this, the cell network and the GPS to build an accurate location. There are no other wireless networks at that location. I was at this location for around 10 minutes. Google location history shows this location on the mark.
2. They know that I was at the Pizza hut because I left a review in Google+ and was approximately near it at the time and stayed in roughly the same location for about 90 minutes. Google location history shows this location on the mark.
It's all about correlating events and data, not specifically accurate bits of data.
Granted these are all assumptions but they would stand as evidence in a court of law.
Now I'm not fussed about this myself as it's something I trade for the service, but the data is there.
I don't agree with gp's dismissal, but the point about gps and coarse location was that continuously updating gps (for full 3m resolution) would be too taxing on the batteries -- not that gps resolution was poor.
Don't think that applies if parent was using google maps to navigate, though -- how useful would navigation be without correct and updated position? Not to mention wi-fi location, correlation with plus posts/check-ins etc...
You didn't explain how they knew about the PH/BP, which makes people assume it was due to location data (like your first example).
However, as for comment #1, Google doesn't use the SSIDs to determine locations on mobile, they use the [MAC Addresses](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/...). They do have a database that also includes SSIDs for these MAC addresses, but there could be a dozen SSIDs around you at any given time, and you could be at any one of those businesses. I have already explained that Google uses coarse location to determine your location, not fine because of battery issues (and you can check this in Android, it's listed under the lower-power location use). Coarse doesn't use GPS, and its accuracy is generally 100+ meters because of this. It will know the general area you were at (and, no, it won't know you were there for 10 minutes, as it only picks up your location at fixed intervals which IIRC is above 10 minutes), but it won't know, specifically, where you were in that area.
I will concede on the Pizza Hut location, but it would have only known you were there because of the review, not because of the location (for the same reason as above).
I purposely avoided explaining it to demonstrate a point: the average user doesn't know this or understand it. They understand the outcome only.
Sorry, you are 100% correct with the SSID vs MAC. If I'm in my car with the handset externally powered, does it use course location or does it use all three sources because on KitKat on my Moto G, it gives me the option to use all three at cost of battery life?
I disagree with your assessment of the location ability. It's definitely better than you explain it. I can go through at least 100 previous data points in my history and it's spot on each time.
The way Google gets your approximate location is not as simple as just sending Google a list of visible access points and figuring out where the Google Maps car was when it saw that access point, it also passes along the signal strength of every access point and because the Street View car is recording signal strength and GPS location for every measurement as it's driving by it allows for a much finer resolution than just a binary "can I see this access point".
Basically, even though there was a dozen access points visible, that increases accuracy, not decreases. Like if your phone reported that it's got the same signal strength for BP and PH it will estimate that you are in between them with other access points helping to conclude that you aren't off to the side otherwise the signal strength to xyz access point would be higher.
In other words, Just sending a list of access points and signal strengths to Google gives them a rather accurate guess as to where you are in the world, much greater than just 100+ meters.
Also, Android can also figure out when you are in a car moving at highway speeds thanks to the accelerometer and is quite accurate at telling when you're walking, jogging, biking, or driving. Enable Google Now on your phone and it will send you a summary of how many miles of what activity you've done in the last month with rather surprising accuracy for me personally.
You haven't explained why Google wouldn't know about PH/BP.
In Apple's implementation which I do know well the WiFi triangulation is enabled even at the coarsest resolution. Which is obvious since it is low cost. So if indeed there is one SSID/MAC in the area and it is coming from BP why would Google not know this ?
The presence of a SSID isn't indicative that you went to said business. If I lived above a McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Subway, all with their respective SSIDs, that doesn't mean I am at any of the businesses. So sure, Google could know that there's a Pizza Hut near you, but they have no way of knowing whether you're actually at the Pizza Hut, or, say, the Tesco next door.
I think 100m is the best they can guarantee. You may get better results based on the data they have in your area (especially WiFi triangulation), but it's not guaranteed. In any case, the best they have for me is: http://imgur.com/vVbqSvr which is coarse enough to not actually provide much data. I could have been to any one of a dozen or so businesses in that area.
Funny thing though - Google could easily blow all those Endomondo et al. "share my running" apps out of the water by just allowing to publicly share a time-delimited subset of your location history...
No kidding, any Maps user can see their GPS location being collected when they use Maps. I think mynameisvlad may mean they wouldn't necessarily know if you stopped at a specific place as part of the location data collected when you're not using Maps, because in that case it may not use GPS. But I have a nice phone, battery life isn't really a concern to me, some software on the phone probably knows that too, and I don't trust the word of a random person on HN that the software wouldn't do an opportunistic GPS look up at least every now and then. In any case I want my phone to use GPS whenever it can so that it's as accurate as it can be, that's why I have in my settings GPS always enabled, with high accuracy (uses GPS, wi-fi, and mobile networks) and indeed I have Google Location Reporting on as well which looks up my location throughout the day whether or not I'm using Maps.
Because in this instance, the argument/discussion is about the phone specifically, not Google Maps. When my phone is on stand-by, like when I'm driving and not using the GPS, the phone will rely on less battery-taxing things like triangulation, Wi-Fi AP's that Google knows (MAC/SSID ?). Google Maps would however use GPS when it is on, not when the user hasn't specifically turned it on.
It's you who's confused (as you said previously, no offence). The post you replied to talked about "I just drove half way across the UK. Google knows that because I was using Google maps", and the mention of not using highest resolution is about Google (not Maps) using other means to determine location. Clear difference between Google Maps and Google.
Silly technicalities, don't know what the downvote was for, was only trying to help your initial confusion :)
> [Google] uses coarse location (GPS being too taxing on battery to get constant location updates) which has an accuracy of 100+ meters.
You mean Google Maps -- the app -- doesn't use location data from GPS? I am pretty sure that isn't true.
If you meant Google Maps -- the service -- then the sentence doesn't make much sense, since it doesn't use any location service on the mobile directly. It is just interfacing with the mobile app over a network.
No I mean Google, the company. Specifically, Google pings your location at intervals (building their Location history, linked above). For this specific use (which isn't tied to Google Maps), it's done through the Google Play Services, which, under the Location setting on your phone is listed as "Low battery use". This indicates that it is not using the GPS chip, but relying only on WiFi and Cell tower triangulation.
Google itself might have remained relatively benign, but the fears have absolutely materialised on the government side. Google is now clearly being used as a point of central control over the internet with the "right to be forgotten", the NSA interceptions, etc. The fact the internet made this far has been largely due to its decentralised nature. The point of the article was that centralisation of any of its functions undoes that robustness.
and weirdly enough google services that compete with eg yelp are almost always at the top! sure couldn't be them using their near-monopoly in search to juice their other businesses, could it?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there's been more than a few people arrested in-part based on their google queries, some of them wrongly and some of them rightly so.
I believe at least that "internet history" has been featured in legal proceedings (arrests/trials) -- I'm not sure if there have been warrants issued based on getting search history from google. I'd love to hear more, if anyone has a reference either way.
Tracking Google Apps for Education students and even paid Google Apps for Business emails to build ad profiles, making misleading statement to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to statements to federal court, lacking the dare to continue lying and finally confessing the truth and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Education data.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.ht...
Tracking the physical location of Android phones for ad purposes without properly informing users and disabling things like Google Now if you disable the tracking.
http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/
Google employee access personal information of others. Google says it has fixed the issue, but how do we even know? Is there any legal safeguard against someone at Google reading your email?
http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...
Decreasing contrast in the background of ads, this especially hurts older people as ability to see contrast decreases with age, and the FTC found that almost half the people fail to notice that there are ads on the page, thus forcing products that are first in the organic results to pay Google for ads.
I'm sure you're aware that this collection of yours pertains to complaints of interested parties, and that if you'd bothered with any follow-through on these topics you'd have encountered a very different picture.
But seeing as you had a cherry picked list of the harshest (and incomplete) reportings at the ready, augmented with you're own slanted commentary my guess is that a "full picture" isn't what you're aiming for here.
The evilness has been materialized, you just dont want to acknowledge it - Occupy Wallstreet was effectively dismantled, one of the biggest protest movements in modern time as well as Tea Party. The biggest thefts in history went by, quite efficiently put down - and you think that the NSA, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple were not complecent in those events? That the big data aboundant about the people was not used against them?
Who knows whom, where they go, what they read, what theyre interested in, what they search for, what they say to each other. A good college CompSci student with that data could pick out the troublemakers/leaders.
> A good college CompSci student with that data could pick out the troublemakers/leaders.
Occupy fell apart because it didn't have leaders. Or any coherent agenda. It was a bunch of people dissatisfied with the status quo without any realistic prescription for improving it.
The Tea Party at least knew what they wanted. Their problem was taking money from and thereby becoming owned by the entrenched Republican power brokers.
Neither of their failings had anything to do with Google.
So while the author is right about potential dangers mentioned in the penultimate paragraph, it's been more than a decade and those fears haven't really materialized. The article sounds exactly like things that are being said in anti-Google threads in 2014.