This. I hate this more than I can express in a public forum.
Google is notorious for it, especially when they try to get you to use the YouTube app rather than the web interface.
It's not "maybe later" I want—it's "never ask me again".
Google is notorious for it, especially when they try to get you to use the YouTube app rather than the web interface.
It's not "maybe later" I want—it's "never ask me again".
The worse, if you agree, it enables the location service for everything all the time where you have the feeling it was just for the Maps app.
I just discovered that 2 days ago and I must say I was really really angry at Google for this clear dark pattern use.
And Google is really shitty app publisher in more ways than this. Has anyone ever seen a meaningful changelog in any major app of theirs?
I now use HERE WeGo or OsmAnd (on non-GAPPS devices, from f-droid). While the experience is not nearly as cool, I love the fact that I am not participating in uncontrolled monitoring and unexpected battery drainage.
Their piping of apps' access to things like location through Google Play Services to force you to give them access makes a mockery of the permissions system. I really don't like the way they've been doing things the past few years.
Edit: Gmail complains about lack of access to camera and microphone, not location services. Fixed.
When Google released the new permission system in Android, they blew their one chance to actually make permissions meaningful. The fact that "portscan my network" is one of the Other permissions is testament to how unconcerned with user security and privacy they seem to be as an organization (despite, no doubt, some individual developers who care). I'm pretty close to deciding that my next phone will be dumb and featureless.
But still, I can't see why Gmail should need access to those devices, and far less why it should harass me so aggressively about it when it works fine without them.
Just conjecture, but I feel like there was a sea-change at Google regarding attitudes towards users' privacy, about the time that adblock became widespread and competition started heating up between them and Facebook for ad revenue. They're behaving far less ethically than they did even five years ago.
The worst is that if you accept it once, this setting is saved and there is no obvious way in the UI to change it back (which was possible in the past I think).
To reset it, go in the Applications manager in the settings, choose Google Play Services and reset all its data.
There is no way it is a bug, someone had to think and put this deceptive behaviour as a feature (and someone had to design its deceptive UI, someone had to do unit testing for this deceptive behaviour, someone had to QA it…).
The tollways here are especially heinous when you don't use them often enough to justify the hassle of getting an I-Pass, since the cash toll is twice the I-Pass toll.