Google will discontinue its Trusted Contacts app in December
theverge.com
theverge.com
I do wish it had messaging features, and geofencing alerts would be a huge bonus so I can be alerted when she arrives at a location safely. I also think there needs to be some Nest integrations so I can ask "Where is X?" or "How far is X" and it would say "X is currently 10 minutes away from your location".
I guess what they have is a good start, but I really hope they can push the tech further to make it even more useful than what it is at current.
I would argue that technology that is better designed to make nefarious purposes harder to achieve, rather than just dumping features onto the user, is innovative.
User protection is also a feature, one that's usually way more valuable than convenience but that we only appreciate when it's gone and it's too late.
It's not necessarily a matter of privilege, we're all potentially at the risk of having an account hijacked by a rando, or having a device stolen, or having a relationship go sideways to a crazy point.
Redefining general terms is the thing that adds the least possible value to a conversation. It often just makes things worse.
New features, by itself, aren't the only way technology moves forward, even thought it's the more noticeable and entertaining way. An improvement in the way existing features are accessed, or even a protection for certain features being accessed in a way that's potentially wrong, can also be an improvement or innovation. Static typing, enforced linters, or the Rust borrow checker are good examples of restriction-as-a-feature.
Therefore, I disagree with the original comment's implication that restricting features in lieu of security or misuse is a blocker for innovation.
Te parent's "...but I really hope they can push the tech further to make it even more useful than what it is at current" is basically 'let's have more of this'. Convenience is evidently winning out over risk or privacy intrusion and a the panopticon not by the back door but by the front door, with a welcome mat outside and a nice cup of tea waiting within.
To be blunt, I find this POV scary.
Brin's takeaway is the genie is out of the bottle, and the thing to do is decide what level of surveillance we're comfortable with.
Google email you quite frequently (I believe monthly?) to tell you that you are sharing your location and with whom. You can disable it at any time. Obviously disabling such a feature in an abusive relationship may not be an option.
1. Seeing if/when friends get home safe after a late night (they may forget to text before going to bed)
2. ETA of friends I'm meeting that travel by bike
3. Is X in the neighborhood if I wanted to stop by? (avoids the check message, still will check for most friends before showing up at the door)
Sharing your location is a personal choice I'd never judge someone for not doing, but I very much enjoy it with close friends I trust.
It's very common when a group of people is going to hang out, so the rest of them that come a bit later doesn't need to go through the whole dance ("hey are you still at X place?" "have you moved?" "I can't see you" ) but still leaves you with privacy by default.
That said, optimizing for privacy by default for an already limited allow-list is not the right way to conceptualize this. That need to explicitly make the choice to share is a friction point, not a feature. What if my friend forgets? What if it's needed over an hour? Why does my possibly tipsy friend need to decide how long I need their location for in the moment? On by default is an explicit feature once you explicitly allow, and the need to grant each time is a bug. Google's original product appeared to strike a balance here with the "on by default but possible to reject" model pictured in the article which is interesting. Still, they understood they made an on by default product and the user value clearly.
For friends father away on the social graph, those temporary shares are also great too! iMessage/Find My Friends has this and I use it exactly as you describe. But it's two separate use cases.
Careful, you are handing your gps location at all time (to facebook) with that option (using IOS). I like the feature but i'm not using it anymore, just one shot location sharing from me
You're 100% correct though - if you use an app for this, you also need to trust the app owner!
My wife also has a cup of tea waiting for her when she gets back from work, thanks to a Geofence I have set up.
I’ve shared my location in one form or another with my girlfriend and now wife for a long time.
“Hey can you come pick me up?” “Sure, leaving shortly” — not only do we not need to play some game figuring out exactly where the person needing pickup is (which is a huge boon because she’s awful with directions), but for the person being picked up it’s like Uber—you can see if they’ve left, how far out, etc.
“You just about home?” — if we’re driving, we’re not going to respond to that. Instead it’s easy to answer a question like “when should I start supper”, even in the face of unpredictable traffic, just by checking the other person’s location instead of having to call and have them take a call while driving.
And just from a general safety perspective—wife and baby go for a mid-day walk and a simple “hey you got your phone on you?” gives us both some piece of mind. She knows if she’s not back in some remotely realistic timeframe and doesn’t pick up her phone there’s someone that will come find her, I don’t have to just sit at home and try and decide if it’s been long enough to file a missing person report or if she’s just run into a friend at the park and is too engrossed to notice her phone in the stroller. And none of this requires any planning or communication.
Also had previously shared my location with a good friend and business partner because when we were both travelling separately to meet with clients it made it a lot easier to coordinate, if you arrived early to be able to (accurately) say “oh he’s 5 minutes out” or see they were stuck in traffic and shortcut the awkwardness and just have the person who wasn’t driving be able to call and say you’d both be late instead of walking in and making awkward small talk forever, etc.
I’m not going to share my location generally, but sharing selectively can be extremely convenient.
> And just from a general safety perspective—wife and baby go for a mid-day walk and a simple “hey you got your phone on you?” gives us both some piece of mind. She knows if she’s not back in some remotely realistic timeframe and doesn’t pick up her phone there’s someone that will come find her
I took huge amount of mid-day walks with kids and playground trips with kids and never ever needed someone to go find me. I did not needed husband to check how long I am away or anything like that. What exactly is "realistic timeframe" for walk with kid? For me, it could take anything between 20minutes and 4hours depending on weather, kids mood or my mood. But I did not needed husband to rescue me from dangers of local playground or park, like not once.
I am not outlier, I do not know a single woman with baby in real life who would need that level or control in order to have peaceful mind. All these "realistic examples" make me wonder whether people did not normalized huge amount anxiety for themselves. Or they are made up.
This seems really committed to pigeonholing the motivation for this functionally. All I can say is my partner and I use it all the time. We have irregular schedules and are not always checking our phones to respond to the other's "hey where are you text." We use Apple's version of this which is VERY clear that someone else can see your location, and requires explicit opt-in. The use case is convenience, not anxiety.
I would assume that if the location with your partner is not available for a bit, you wont turn into bundle of anxiety. Which is then, whatever.
But examples in this thread are different. People feeling unsafe because someone is late as usually. And that is neither normal nor healthy. And absolutely no one is served by trying to normalize that.
When I went to college, it was rather common for individuals in my physics program to ask to be escorted to their cars if they were in the lab after dark, due to a few incidents of assaults and attempted kidnappings in the dark parking lots. It wasn't restricted to gender lines either. Luckily better lighting and cameras were installed rather quickly after the rash of incidents, but that fear persisted for a while.
Just because you were lucky enough to live in an area where you were unlikely to be accosted when going out on your own, it doesn't mean that others have unfounded fears.
Compared to that, controlling abusive partners are significantly more likely threat to most of us. That is relatively normal.
So, if you live in place where kidnappings are the biggest danger, that place is outlier place. It is not so much that i an privileged for not worrying about it, it is that the city you are in is really bad.
The _small_ park nearby is over 60 acres of fairly dense woods with signs posted at all the entrances warning of bears and other wildlife. The one a bit further down is over 1500 acres of similarly dense forest and trails. So yeah, we both appreciate knowing if we get mauled by wildlife or, more realistically, twist an ankle or something that there's someone that can come find us when we call or if we can't. A realistic timeframe is "roughly however long you said you planned on being gone", barring no further updates.
I really appreciate the implications that come with calling this "control". This is a bidirectional exchange of information that we both find convenient and reassuring given that neither of us really know anyone in this city and appreciate having a lifeline to someone we can trust.
Not that I should need to defend my relationship in the first place, but it was her idea to set up and, since it'll be your next issue, her idea to move somewhere where we don't know anyone. Especially now that we have a kid I would much rather be back where we had friends and strong family support.
Anyway, if I have an bad accident[1], I might not be able to operate the phone. Either the phone could get damaged or I'm passed out, hurt or similar.
Sharing the location in real-time with my gf, Google and possibly various governments seems preferable to lying hurt alone deep in the woods without anyone having a clue where I am.
[1]: Friend of a friend had a front wheel puncture in a turn at the bottom of a hill, causing him to crash into some rocks. By sheer luck someone found him. He was passed out. The crash crushed his jaw, and he sustained severe brain damage. It's years since and he's still not recovered 100%.
That's my tradeoff matrix, yours may be different.
Thankfully, she managed to calm down and resolve the situation as it was only a small bite, but if the situation was worse and I would have been too late to find her. We thought that we can't let this situation happen again, so we now share each other's location just in case anything like that happens again.
It's also great knowing how far away she is so I can start dinner and have it ready for when she steps in the door.
Talking to people trying to get divorced and preparing to have their partner become an "enemy", a lot of them had their apple and google accounts managed by their partners.
It was either a shared account and their partner accessed the info just logging in, or it was their own, but setup and 2FA'd by their partner who would get notified of external logins etc. And most of the account services have no protection against "yourself" logging in.
The state of account management can be very dire for people who don't actively manage theirs from beginning to end. Then the complexity of some settings can make it look daunting and they just bail on the whole process.
I use the Trusted Contacts app to track my mom as she goes into the city for doctor's appointments. We're often on the phone together, calling Uber's together to just the correct spot, all while i'm sitting in the office in another city.
Thankfully my mom is not in this condition, but in our city we regularly get notices of senior citizens who are confused and lost. There is another situation where this type of app helps.
I’m just having trouble wrapping my mind around tracking that used to be reserved for criminals wearing ankle bracelets.
Partner B: I'd be happy to, but as I'm forgetful when I'm busy working late, and me forgetting will make you worry, we should use something that works automatically.
(Add or remove going to the gym, stopping by the store on the way home, getting a beer on Friday...)
Obviously, you could accomplish the same thing by reliably leaving work at the same time every day - but some would say ceding authority over your own schedule is a greater indignity than ceding privacy over your current location.
Partner A sounds like he/she might have some deeper separation anxiety or trust issues to work through. Being out of contact for multiple hours should be normal without conjuring up worries about accidents.
Has partner B ever been in an accident on the way home? Would worrying somehow prevent it?
If partner B stops for more than the pre-approved amount of time at a given stop light, how many seconds does it take for partner A’s panic to set in? 60 seconds? Remember, B could have gotten into an accident and seconds matter!
Partner A needs to chill the fuck out and remember that partner B is a functioning adult that can survive multiple hours without the observation and worry of partner A.
Telling people on the internet what to do. Doesn't sound very un-control freaky.
Partner A can survive just fine, but partner B is hungry and wants to have dinner.
Partner B isn't responding to queries about whether Partner A should eat. Is this:
a. Partner B is on the way home and so can't respond
b. Partner B is engrossed in work/a meeting/shopping and so can't respond, but won't be back soon
If a -> Wait
If b -> Eat food
What on earth does that have to do with separation anxiety?
This has nothing to do with being hungry. This is a person with separation anxiety or control issues.
I mean this 100%. Healthy relationships do not require "ceding authority over own schedule" nor non-stop tracking. If partner acted like A in your example, I would seen that as a red flag and sign of controlling personality.
Not worrying is all very well, but imagine the family dinner starts cooking at 6pm, is ready to eat at 6:30pm, and has gone cold by 6:45pm. And imagine this timing works fine 9 days out of 10.
It's reasonable for whoever is doing the cooking to want to know - ideally at 6pm and certainly at 6:30pm - whether their partner is on time, running 5 minutes late, or running an hour late.
> Healthy relationships do not require "ceding authority over own schedule"
People do that all the time - A person who has promised their partner they'll get home by 6:30pm every evening for dinner has ceded control over their schedule. Nothing unusual about that.
> I would seen that as a red flag and sign of controlling personality.
A partner who will have dinner ready when you get home from work doesn't seem like a red flag to me.
> People do that all the time - A person who has promised their partner they'll get home by 6:30pm every evening for dinner has ceded control over their schedule. Nothing unusual about that.
I was literally reacting to parent who said this: "you could accomplish the same thing by reliably leaving work at the same time every day - but some would say ceding authority over your own schedule is a greater indignity than ceding privacy over your current location."
In any case, promising something is not ceding authority by any reasonable definition. Parent claimed that having partners location all the time is necessary to avoid "ceding authority over schedule". Theory was his, not mind
> A partner who will have dinner ready when you get home from work doesn't seem like a red flag to me.
When that requires constant location tracking, then it is red flag. If your schedule have you coming in within an hour long span, I find it odd to organize the dinner so that it is done exactly wherever you come it. I would expect the dinner be more regular, at the time when you are usually already at home.
If it takes me 45 minutes to get home is it really that crazy that I might want my SO to be able to have dinner rather than awkwardly (and hungrily!) wait for me?
The approach I went down was something with home automation and geo-fencing to trigger a notification if I was still at work like an hour after I was supposed to leave, but it's the same use cases.
Before kids, I was coming home randomly and it was not big deal. I did not expected husband to have dinner exactly when I come or wait for me if I am late for random reasons. If I found I was about to be late when he might wait, I would call or he would call.
Frankly, you all have either super tolerant spouses willing to time dinner too you exact moments, or controlling spouses using dinner to keep check on you. But the relationships that come up in this discussion do not strike me as usual at all.
The geolocation thing for me was purely so I could get dinner ready for the both of us in time since we like to eat together.
It's convenient for me since they know how far I am when I'm heading over. They can tell if I'm in town if they want to go out. Honestly, never felt uncomfortable.
We’re talking about someone setting up geofencing on their partner so they get notifications when they leave/arrive specific areas. That’s obsessive controlling behavior completely independent of you just making your location available for people to see.
But if they used the fence around their own home to be like "Hey, when's he near my place so I can see if he wants to come hang" I think I'd like that.
So perhaps, to me, the thing that makes me happy is intent. I bucket these people into high-trust so I expect them to not do the weird one (and they won't even do the latter).
The geofencing thing would be so I could time when to start cooking dinner and have it ready for when she gets in. I work from home so it's easy for me to cook and I just like to have it ready and stay warm by the time she gets in.
The shared bank account is harder, I set aside a little bit of money into an account only I can see each payday, so that I can buy things without the surprise being ruined.
My wife doesn’t just randomly pull her phone out throughout the day and check where I am. She uses it to answer a question like “is he on his way home / can I start supper?” or “he’s normally home 3 hours ago, has he even left work yet?”. And generally only once I’ve not responded to her just asking me.
If I wanted to go buy her a surprise gift I’d just tell her beforehand “got some errands to run after work be a couple hours late” or walk out on a weekend and say “running to the store, back in a couple hours”.
In that case unless I take way longer than I figured and don’t check in or respond to her checking in she has no reason to check where I am.
The thought of being looked up like this is very uneasy.
The things you mention are all available in 'FindMy.app' on the apple ecosystem (works with phone, notebook, and watch)
I didn't know you could set up notifications for navigation though. They used to have commute notifications but I thought those got removed.
I know some fell runners who leave a copy of their route plans with a friend before heading out for similar "just-in-case" reasons, especially when going somewhere remote with particularly tricky terrain.
What would be cool if any time I pick a contact in Google Maps to navigate to, it would "share my progress" with them too.
The location sharing stuff was implemented without this in mind, completely unrelated to this type of feature set.
To say they “stopped short” would imply they had started.
For the rest it just shares the last location google already knows of.
No, if you are helping someone because you expect something in return, you are doing business.
They could just call it 'marketing' like all the other companies who do things for ambiguous returns.
Alas Google knows it already has people’s loyalty, so it can afford to care far less
This and the rest is a fair comment. Thank you for linking it. I'll personally be getting off the Google kills everything bandwagon (I'll stay on the Google is creepy as fuck bandwagon but that's unrelated)
Maybe that's worse for you? Not for me to decide. I'm not using Google services as best I can either way because they're an advertising company, but I will stop my personal contribution prattling off the Google closes everything comments.
I speak only for myself, a pet peeve on this site is people thinking every comment is a proclamation from the almighty. I'm just a fat bastard sitting on a toilet reading HN, I'm not telling you what to do
For Google+, it says "Google Photos, Chat + Meet, Calendar Features, etc.", but these are in almost no way equivalent to a social media style stream with communities and circles and such.
Similar with Latitude, IIRC it was merged into G+ and then killed. The equivalent feature didn't exist at the time (not sure if it does now, my cause to use it then no longer applies.)
- Picasa was much better than Google Photos
- Google+ as a social network is gone, for all intents and purposes
- Google Desktop Search isn't even mentioned
- most importantly they killed the original Google search. The quality we see today is how Googles competitors used to be ;-)
(The last is a joke, but also true, try this query and tell me how many of the top 10 results actually contains the phrase "express-http-proxy": https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&client=firefox-b-m... . FWIW this ha been going on since at least 2013 which is the first occurence I can find where I document that they ignore both double quotes and verbatim: http://techinorg.blogspot.com/2013/03/?m=0)
Reading that subreddit is a guilty pleasure of mine. It reminds me a lot of how the Windows Phone subreddit was while that was still around.
> Inbox -> GMail Features
Some features made it, but what I've heard from the people that used it was the complete redesign toward tasks instead of emails was what made it valuable, which hasn't happened to gmail.
> Google Wave -> Realtime collaboration in Google Docs/Slides/Sheets
The closest equivalent now is actually Slack. Google was too early to the party and didn't realize what could come of it.
The answer is that there was a conflict between two top-level executives: Sundar and Rubin. Thus two OSes from the same company. We all know who won in the end.
This currently ships and is heavily marketed as well.
> The GitHub project suggests Fuchsia can run on many platforms, from embedded systems to smartphones, tablets, and personal computers.
> [..]
> A special version of Android Runtime for Fuchsia is planned to run from a FAR file, the equivalent of the Android APK.
This appears to be the Android/ChromeOS killer GP was alluding to.
It large companies there are enough “information fluctuations” that some fringe OS projects emerge. Microsoft had super-secret project Genesis, then some managed kernel project I don’t even remember codename of. They even make sense from top-level management perspective (“What if we are missing next big thing?”) and allow creative talent to chill out doing something cool without going to competition.
But at the end of the day these projects don’t amount to anything. If they ever become threat to mainline org, they are consumed in the political battle and grunts are re-orged “to integrate developed technology into the main product”.
I'll just keep on dreaming.
It’s not a particularly likely scenario but nice to have the backup in case of that or something else I haven’t imagined.
I’m considering switching this off, though, because several times they’ve used it to just look up where I am because they’re being nosey. There is always a reason given, but being able to give a reason doesn’t make something legit.
This just feels creepy and I’ve pointed this out, yet they keep doing it - and perhaps without my knowledge sometimes too.
Now I feel like if I turn it off then it’ll look like I have something to hide, but that’s okay. That feeling is massively outweighed by the desire not to be followed around. My phone provider and probably several government agencies are doing that already. At least they don’t send me messages asking if I’m planning to leave work soon.