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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

One of my frustrations with Android is the fact Google Maps constantly bugs me to enable "Google's Location Service". Even if I've asked for something as simple as centering the map on my GPS location. I must have answered 'no' to that prompt a hundred times by now.

My phone has GPS, which is privacy-preserving and more accurate when outdoors - which is any time I'm navigating, as I don't need maps indoors. So "Google's Location Service" is useless to me. I don't understand why Google has made it so difficult to avoid sharing my location "anonymously" with them.

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What I find particularly aggravating about that is the UX dark pattern they've utilised for the dialogue. I forget the exact wording, but rather than "Would you like to switch on Google's location service? [Yes] [No]", it's something like "To continue, enable Google's location service. [OK] [Cancel]" - implying that you need to switch it on to do what you wanted to.

Not surprising.

Your lifetime value for Google multiplies when they can track your location. They learn where you live/work, how you commute, who you hang out with, whether and where you travel, when you get sick, etc.

Much of it can be approximated by looking at your searches alone, but the correlation with your location record yields much higher accuracy.

I am SOOO glad that in iOS 11 I'll be able to force apps to only get my location data when they're running (e.g. Waze). Right now some of these apps can get location data because they the app only presents old-style privacy controls (all the time / not at all).

I'm sure the calculator app that requested my location, camera, microphone, and list of running apps is streaming it to some ad/analytics company.

The dark pattern I remember they use is hiding the "No" button if you mark the "don't ask me again" checkbox.

Scumbags through and through.

The devious reason is because Google wants to encourage you to use their services, which will in turn improve their services and enable Google to provide more value to Android users.

The more mundane reason is because it's a better location service than your phone's GPS. It's a fair question how much more privacy-preserving your phone is when you disable Google's Location Service, given everything else your phone is doing but let's put the privacy angle aside.

Phone GPS is not consistently accurate, even outdoors. By allowing Google to use other signals, such as nearby wifi, cell towers, etc Google can provide a more consistent and accurate location for your device while also using less power.

Otherwise, answer hit "no". But I think it's worth questioning whether it's so frustrating when Google Maps assumes it can use Google Location Services.

I feel the same way about that, but there is something far more annoying than it, at least to people who are even aware of it.

That's the fact that Android hides a lot (even thousands a day) location requests as well as other types of requests from both Google's own apps as well as from third-party apps by routing them through the "Android OS" category in the battery usage stats. This way users are completely clueless about just how harmful these constant requests are to their battery life.

Android OS as well as Android System are two of the biggest eaters of battery life, and it's because of crap like that. My guess is Google doesn't want to show users exactly whose requests harm the battery the most because its apps are the biggest offenders (especially the ad-showing system).

I hope more people realize that this is going on and pressure Google into showing more detailed battery stats or at least assigning the location requests as well as other battery draining requests to the apps in question, rather than putting them all under the "Android OS" or "Android System" umbrella.

Because everything they do is funded by selling ads that target people based on a heap of different factors, one of which is location.

Honestly I wonder how anyone in tech doesnt know why google offers "free" services and pushes people towards their own non-private "solutions"

Yeah but they have my location by GPS, and still they need the Wifi-location service as well. Why?!?!?

They don't need it, but they'll keep asking in hopes that you'll click "yes" (by accident?)

After which the option disappears deep inside some obscure setting, is conserved across multiple major updates, and synced across devices on all platforms. ;)

I used to be on Android and I eventually clicked yes out of annoyance.

They need it so they can train the wifi-location service. That way, they can violate your privacy later.

Also, (if you're on wifi) they presumably infer the location of anyone using the same public IP as you, whether or not they are using android and whether or not they disabled location tracking/gps on location tracking on their device.

That is to tie your wifi access point to a specific location. They can then use this information to deduce the location of users who are not using GPS too. They can use it to deduce relationships between people who are connected to same wifi at the same time. They can deduce what time you are at what location and predict where you will be next. The possibilities are endless.

There's a little subtle tech behind wifi geolocation. Skyhook Wireless has some of this figured out, and their material even claims they are "defying standard OS limitations."

In other words, they're finding you even when you prefer not.

Agreed 100%. I found that on my phone (Galaxy S8, Android N), having the wifi location service enabled doubles or triples idle battery drain. So regardless of privacy concerns, I'm basically forced to have GPS-only location updating. It irks me to no end that Google incessantly bugs me to enable its service, which in turn changes my location mode back to GPS+Wifi and ills my battery life.

If there are only specific areas where you use wifi, you might find something like Llama useful - you do low power geolocation by 'learning' the cell towers at each location, then set actions for arrival or departure from locations.

The default rules may do more than you want (e.g fiddling with volume), but you can easily strip that back to just wifi control.

You only have to answer "yes" once to "Enable high accuracy location" and the have no option to change that, other than reflashing your phone. However if you don't answer yes, it will just keep asking forever every time you turn on location.

I have Cyanogen installed and it still does this, probably because of Google location services.

This is the exact reason why I use osmand for my lookup and navigation purposes. Offline maps are a nice feature on top of this.

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