It's surprising enough that articles were written about it, and Google had to clarify its privacy policy to explain it.[0] It is not intuitive or natural to a normal user to believe that location data will be stored when they have a permission entitled "location" turned off. That's deceptive on Google's part, plain and simple.
On that note, I don't really care what Apple does, why would bad privacy policies on iPhone make me feel better about Google spying on me?
> That's how Gmail was marketed when it launched. Ads were shown based on the contents of emails. Everybody knew this.
Literally the next comment alongside yours is someone who didn't know this.
> If you mean the Street View vans collect WiFi SSIDs, Apple does exactly the same.
Yes, that's what I mean[1], and, again, who cares whether or not Apple does the same? We're supposed to believe this was totally expected behavior that was entirely fine, which is why Google was forced to respond and change their policies after public backlash.
Why do people do this? Why do people look at public, documented controversies and say, "there wasn't a controversy, everyone was OK with it"? This stuff isn't public knowledge, or else it wouldn't be newsworthy.
I've written about this pattern in the past[2], but I'm not going to rehash it in detail here. The short version is that every privacy accusation is denied vigorously until the story breaks that it's actually real. And then suddenly the conversation shifts and those privacy violations were all public knowledge and the controversy was overblown and nobody smart was ever surprised by them. People are paranoid until it's proven they're not, and then they're accused of over-reacting.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...
Google didn't update any privacy policies in this article. It is about background collection of location data when location services was disabled that has since stopped. Meanwhile, Apple continues to collect your location data in the background with no way to disable it.
> why would bad privacy policies on iPhone make me feel better about Google spying on me?
Because you're saying that Google is uniquely deceptive on privacy when the main competitor is provably worse.
> Google was forced to respond and change their policies after public backlash.
As I showed, Apple still hasn't changed its policies on WiFi collection. Responding to privacy concerns is better than not responding to privacy concerns by any definition.
It is possible for multiple companies to be bad at the same things.
Microsoft no longer uploads WiFi passwords, but when it did, you could opt out by putting _optout anywhere in the SSID.
This is disingenuous. If the user uses a Google app that needs location data, of course that location will be sent to Google. This also happens on iOS.
> 3. Similarly (until recently) most people didn't realize that Google was using email info for advertising
That's how Gmail was marketed when it launched. Ads were shown based on the contents of emails. Everybody knew this.
> 5. Until consumer backlash forced them to stop, Google Maps also aggregated user wifi network names
No, Location Services collects WiFi names. Unlike on iOS [1], this is disable-able on Android, and the checkbox to do so is even shown during device setup. If you mean the Street View vans collect WiFi SSIDs, Apple does exactly the same but worse because nobody has any idea if they respect "_nomap" in the SSID (obeyed by both Mozilla and Google), and Apple won't say.
I find Apple to be far more deceptive on privacy. In addition to the location data that, unlike with Android, you cannot stop Apple from collecting, you also have the problem of having to send banking details to Apple to develop apps for your own devices. For an even bigger deception, look at Tim Cook's weasel words in interviews when asked about China's access to iCloud data. He talks about who has the keys for iMessage communications, which has absolutely nothing to do with the problem. [2]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725216
[2] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43eqpw/tim-cook-insists-c...
Edit for MarioMan: Wifi Services is not the system that collects this data but a user of Location Services. Turning it off won't stop Apple from collecting location data off your device.