Costs of using Google Maps | Hacker News Reader

Costs of using Google Maps

medium.com

33 pointssabas_ge21 comments

Its incredibly annoying when non-advertisers try to write about adtech. Its like a local journalist trying to write about politics in the middle east. They have some good opinions, they do good research, but they can't possibly understand the intricacies of the ecosystem without living in it for years. The author makes good points but is blatantly wrong in a number of ways:

> Retailers (and investors in retail operations) are interested in actual foot traffic, not “estimates” of foot traffic. By merging mobile phone data with real-time foot traffic, retailers know the quality of potential customers as well as the quantity of them

Thats not really what foot traffic tracking is used for. You definitely can't see quality, but you can see quantity. I use foot traffic tracking to see how many users that were exposed to my ads entered a store. Its not very accurate thoguh

> Employers love location data. It helps them reconfigure building layouts to optimize placement of both individuals and teams. On the darker side, it also allows employers to know how often you use the restroom, if you and a colleague are having, ahem, a relationship, or how long you spend tethered to your desk.

Woooo that is 100% false. GPS is not this precise, you'd need nfc gateways (like bluetooth or maybe wifi).

> · The days of ambulance chasing lawyers are long gone. With location data, they can send ads to any mobile phone in the emergency room of your local hospital.

This is true. I've targeted hospitals before, but you don't really need geo data for it.

> law enforcement can watch known high-crime areas and merge that data with publicly-available mobile phone data — data that you freely provide

Its unclear what the author is saying here, but it implies things that are seemingly untrue.

> Is using location services worth you getting fired from your job?

> Is using location services worth being stalked?

> Is using location services worth your children being followed to school?

Fear mongering.

The main thrust of this rambling article seems to be that Google Maps and location services more generally might not be misused by Google itself but instead shown wholesale to a third-party concert app which then leaks it to my "creepy stalker ex-boyfriend." Is there anything new in this article or rehashing familiar hypothetical scaremongering? Not saying that handing over data, especially very personal data, is to be taken lightly but this article adds nothing interesting to the conversation.

Edit: it's looking like the hypothetical sharing of your data with third parties is a fabrication from this article. Can anyone show how this sharing might happen?

>6. Is using location services worth your children being followed to school?

It is a little over the top

That’s funny. One of my former colleagues said she was finally convinced to buy smartphones for her junior high age children when they were followed/stalked by a stranger when walking home from school.

I personally wasn't aware they directly sold the data. I always assumed they acted as intermediaries to advertisers,

They don't (sell your data directly), explained by Google itself https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/

Of course it's up to you how much you trust what they write there.

It's in Google best interest to not give others the data it collects as it can rent out the results multiple times to multiple customers. Where as giving data means they earn money of it one time.

I'm not aware of that either. What API scope would share your location data with a third-party developer? https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/googlescope... doesn't turn up anything obvious.

That would implying you giving access to a 3rd party. I think everyone else is talking about something like Google selling access to said data directly, not via the normal api.

Second this motion.

It's a metoo article trying to capitalize on the data privacy wave to garner few cheap views. Skip.

> If you haven’t given the Google Maps app on your phone the permission to use your location information, it will ask you for that. It’s obvious, isn’t it? But think about that for a moment. Google Maps doesn’t need to know where you are to show you restaurants in Omaha. There are no “terms and conditions” to read. There is only an “accept” button. You click it.

You don't _need_ to share your location with Google Maps in order to utilize it, unless you want turn-by-turn directions from your current location.

What restaurants did Google Maps show you? Unless you searched for a specific restaurant, you likely saw only those restaurants that paid for contextual advertising on that search. (At the very least, you saw the paid listing first, and on a small mobile screen, you may not have scrolled past them.)

The author makes a pretty sweeping claim here and then walks it back in the next sentence. Does anyone else have the experience described? The vast majority of my mobile Maps queries do not seem to show ads at the top, and very few ads show up at all, but maybe I'm an outlier.

The claim the author is making (note, I can not substantiate it in any way) is that the query showed a list of restaurants, and that the top 5 (or top X) in the list were restaurants who had paid Google for the privilege of being listed first (or at least paid so that their position in the results list was closer to the top than those who had not paid).

Not using Google Maps is difficult, but it can be done. I'm currently using OsmAnd from F-Droid and it works awesome. I would recommend it to anyone trying to live without Google services.

> Not using Google Maps is difficult, but it can be done.

It's not difficult to use Apple Maps on an iPhone. You make it sound like Google are the only realistic maps provider available.

Not at all, and going with what the article talks about, Apple Maps is a viable option. Although a lot of the users out there don't have Apple products.

The biggest selling point of Google Maps is not the content itself, it is the usability. And the usability is unmatched by OsmAnd at this moment.

It is such a chore to look something up in OsmAnd that makes me throw all the privacy awareness away and go immediately to Google Maps.

So while replacing Google Maps can be done indeed, it is not a pleasant experience to replace it with open source solutions.

Not only do I use OsmAnd, but I prefer it to Google maps (and not just for privacy reasons). For whatever reason, I always find it a bit fiddly to set up initially, but once I've got it working, it's really nice.

Mapquest is surprisingly still going, and it seems better than Google Maps in my limited experience with it. When visiting Orlando, FL a couple of years ago, the Mapquest app generated optimal and correct directions while Google Maps was generating erroneous ones.

There's also OpenStreetMap.org.

A good reminder to go through your settings and review how many random apps are regularly collecting your location data.

Takes him more paragraphs than I'm willing to read before saying anything substantial. With the tone of someone who's elegantly proving some really surprising truth.

Yes, Google makes money from all the data it collects. It also provides multiple valuable services to its users. Must it be a zero-sum game? I don't think so.

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