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Comment by yding | Hacker News Reader

This is incorrect. Play Services is just a set of proprietary APIs that Google enables for Android: https://developers.google.com/android/guides/overview If you really want to see when data is being sent to Google, use Fiddler or something similar to look at the actual packets.

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It's not really that far off the mark. Their "enhanced device positioning" bs, if you have it turned on(almost everyone does, it's default), will report your location to Google any time any app needs device location.

If you turn off "enhanced device positioning" you run into a ton of dark patterns like Google maps asking you to turn it back on any time you use it.

That's true. Not only that, but google maps generally purges whatever query you're searching for one you close the app, likely so they can put at the top "tired of typing that? Sign in to let maps search from your history and..."

Terribly annoying

well from a privacy focus wouldn't you want your app to not save state in ANY way

There's nothing wrong with the app saving state. It's strictly superior to the alternative they're pushing, which is saving state on Google servers.

The solution is as obvious as it is unlikely to happen: on-demand one-time high resolution location pings, which switches off as soon as it has a fix.

The choice should also not be "high accuracy" vs "low accuracy" but active vs passive.

They'll never do it tho. Android was a mistake.

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