One example - have you ever noticed how Google Maps has barely any street names any more? And the streets that are named are random tiny side streets, no matter how far you zoom in or out. It's because it's designed to be used in Directions mode with location services enabled, and only in Directions mode with location services enabled. You don't need street names if you're a dot following a blue line. Just coincidentally, this is the mode where they get full information about your journey.
If you don't provide a source for this, I'm going to call bullshit.
Screenshot of desktop Google Maps without sign-in: http://prnt.sc/d4j744
Screenshot of Android Google Maps without sign-in: http://prnt.sc/d4jwdy
Both look full of street names to me.
https://www.justinobeirne.com/essay/what-happened-to-google-...
it was on HN a few months ago
(Disclosure: I work for Google, on unrelated stuff.)
Google Maps has the whole download area features[0]. If you have an area downloaded, you can see the entire area rendered at (any/most?) zoom levels, see street names, and even get directions.
As for information density, it seems to be a choice of the Google Maps team to show less data at various zoom levels. That has little to do with talking to their online services and more about how the maps team wants to present data to their users.
[0] https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838?co=GENIE.Plat...
Just how long will it take for google to ask you to long it to do all those useful things that it does? Ability to escape googles panopticon is one of the reasons it's important to support OpenStreetMap https://donate.openstreetmap.org/
You prefetch the list of locations in the area of interest (there won't be that many compared to the humongous amounts of space Google apps consume already), you keep your user's "personality matrix" synchronized, and then when user asks, e.g., for a restaurant nearby, you display them from off-line cache, sorted by distance, characteristics and by how well they match user's personality matrix.
It would be that simple, if it was about actually suggesting places. But it isn't. It's about suggesting places that pay for advertising and successfully billing them, while also collecting as much data about the users as possible. It's a common occurrence on mobile (and also increasingly common in hardware and desktop software) - things that don't need to be on-line are put on the Internet nevertheless, to facilitate a specific business model.
I run tech for a few websites, and we could design for the "no JS" user, there are likely MINOR changes needed for much better support, but it's simply not something that we consider at all. I imagine it's similar with Google, they're designing for the logged in user, with maybe automated testing on the logged out user.
I wrote more on this and how to disable it here: https://unop.uk/on-google-maps-geotagging-and-privacy
Edit: looks like they have pushed out at least two new on-by-default features since I wrote this (not that long ago); 'photo view count opportunities' and 'new and popular places'.
I still think that this is unexpected behaviour. It belongs in the camera app, not the maps app. The expectation is that apps are sand-boxed and separate from each other.
I have anecdotal evidence from friends who don't normally care about issues like this. Yet they felt compelled enough to pro-actively share this with comments similar to "NO GOOGLE!", which suggests it's not just me.
Since you don't pay for most Google services, I doubt you could recover any damages.
They would lose credibility, which would make them lose (a lot of) money indirectly.
It's probably just for their Location History thing. Which I actually really enjoy using, since I can see all of my past days and where I went. It's pretty neat.
I've been using this feature for so long I assume it's opt-in (I don't remember), but I fully recommend it to anyone that has an inkling of a thought that they _might_ want it later, since you can always delete[4] your location history if you decide you don't.
It's also really cool if you go on a lot of trips or take a lot of photos, because it'll map them out in a timeline view of where/when you took them throughout the day[5].
[1] http://i.imgur.com/gWzMgUp.png [2] http://i.imgur.com/Eq7IGnK.png [3] http://i.imgur.com/HEeZupJ.png [4] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en [5] http://i.imgur.com/dF5TI3q.png
Get rid of your toys before your toys get rid of you.
Your phone becomes basically a giant google-keylogger, with geo capabilities.
Worth donating to OSM if you use it: https://donate.openstreetmap.org
Also, you cant know how much Apple stores about you.
However, I don't use a VPN or spoof my User Agent. Google 100% knows who I am without using any fancy tricks. I've wondered -- wouldn't I be better off logging in everywhere, with my Google privacy settings flipped to maximum? While it's certainly possible for them to map my fingerprint back to my account(s) and opt-out preferences, I think that's a bit much to expect for them. I might be shooting myself in the foot by always being logged out!
> the wording made it sounds creepy, like they can keep
> track of where I am whenever they have it, not just the
> destinations I ask for navigation to
No local / device only search history is a joke.
But place suggestion is just ads, and unless they've improved it, not even for places that are open. Who needs that?