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Comment by dessant | Hacker News Reader

Refusing service when the user does not consent to non-essential data sharing is illegal in the EU, and it also breaches Google Play's developer agreement. WiFi scanning is not essential to navigate with an app, and the least they could do to follow the law is to gracefully degrade the service if the user does not consent to share data about nearby devices, such as disabling traffic predictions.

Of course Google's lawyers will argue that this data is in fact required for navigation, the same way some banks in the EU now claim "legitimate interest" when they send you a message about their credit card promotions with winnable prizes, after you've explicitly opted out from all marketing communications.

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> non-essential data sharing

But it is essential. Google (and Apple) maps provide lane specific navigation directions, which are really only possible with assisted GPS. In theory GPS has the accuracy, but remember you are in a big metal box filled with electrical wires. Not to mention other applications like isle specific navigation within stores, which is made possible by bluetooth beacons.

Heck, we are on the verge of a major world conflict where GPS accuracy may be degraded intentionally by the US or jammed by other forces.

Edit: Navigation is used in situations other than racing down the autobahn at 100 mph. Wifi triangulation is used when you are doing 20 mph on a busy street and need to be in the right lane to make a turn, or when you are walking down the street and need to know which unmarked door is the business you are looking for.

Here is some background on why GPS is shit in urban environments: https://vitalalert.com/markets/positioning-smart-cities/3d-p...

Lane specific driving directions?

How many Wifi access points and Bluetooth beacons is Google expecting to find on the highway while moving at 70mph?

I would presume they're hoping to find the devices of other nearby users?

But those would be in random cars around you, which are constantly moving. How could those help retrieving your own location on a map?

If there is a car travelling the same direction as you but a bit to the right, then you are not in the rightmost lane.

How would the phone know the wifi signal is coming from your right?

Because we also know about the car going in the other direction, and you came closer to it. Hypothetically.

Or if gps errors are correlated between phones.

Good point. Ok what about this then: Check the relative strength of cars travelling opposite way compared to same way.

I suppose if there are enough cars, and if you have access to the wifi and location data for enough of the phones, it might be possible to determine someone's relative location by triangulating the signal strength from multiple vantage points.

So my phone by itself doesn't know the direction of the signal, but two or more other phones could combine our location data with relative wifi signal strength and potentially get a better idea of where the signal is coming from. (I had forgotten that we were talking about an entity that potentially knows the data from all the devices, not just one endpoint.)

How about in town, going 20mph?

Most of the android tracing that I've seen logged on location history is wifi multilateration based. Since wifi is on most of the time, it's the quickest way of finding your location (since you're most likely on the road), and you can turn off GPS saving about 25mW or more of power.

But it does mean you need WiFi on negating any power saving you make from disabling GPS anyway.

This may be Waze beacons which use bluetooth to help position the user when they're going through tunnels, where there is no GPS coverage.

https://support.google.com/waze/partners/answer/9416071?hl=e...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18202359/waze-beacons-nyc...

...positioned to give you a 1-dimensional measurement: how far are you along this specific tunnel? Expecting triangulation is, well, overly optimistic. By an order of magnitude, at least (and would require a far denser mesh of beacons, whereas this only needs one beacon every $measure ; or two, for added redundancy).

In other words, it's still useful for navigation like "you are now 2000 meters/yards/cubits into the tunnel, therefore you should be taking either of the two middle lanes", but the trick is, this doesn't require the app to know your current lane.

Wifi and cell tower location are much less precise than GPS. They are irrelevant for lane detection.

Where they are useful is when you are indoors. Or when a tracking business wants an excuse to send your location to their servers.

Rando: "So what's your company do?"

Google employee: "I work at a tracking business"

If we're at the point someone is jamming GPS, I guarantee lane specific directions is going to be about the last thing I care about.

Not correct. Wifi is not used to boost precision at speed. That is generally done via dead reckoning using the gyroscope and accelerometer. Wifi helps with bootstrapping a coarse location quickly before satellites can be acquired, and with indoor positioning.

And (along with cellular data) with acquiring the almanac data via the Internet instead of waiting for up to 30 minutes for the satellites to broadcast it.

Last time I checked it took 12.5 minutes for full almanac broadcast... Did something change?

Yes, but only under optimal conditions.

Just by downloading recent data without any prior knowledge of your location (aside of maybe determining which continent you're on, which most of the time is already known because of which cellular network you're connected to), you can usually easily reduce that to around a minute with no WiFi, BT or cellular triangulation necessary - and that's on a cold start; hot start will be instantaneous anyway.

Information about nearby devices is not essential for navigation, otherwise the permission wouldn't have been optional until now. It can improve the service in some situations, so the right way would be to explain the tradeoff and let the user control how much data is being shared.

Tinfoil hat: the number of US GPS satellites in operation has been going down, both in % of total satellites and in actual numbers over the years. I’d venture “US being able to rely on GPS” is probably not a great thing.

That being said, wanting more user data is probably the right answer.

Not really. That accuracy is not done with RSSI measurements from far away SSIDs.

Are you suggesting that they have no choice but to completely stop locating the user as there's absolutely no way they could offer non-lane specific navigation? The vast majority of it would be identical and I'm sure they could easily and gracefully degrade to that when strictly necessary.

How much does a company need to degrade a service - at potentially great cost - to be compliant before they can claim it then would be better not to provide the service at all to customers unwilling to share data?

I am not claiming that this is where Google needs to draw the line in the sand - but there obviously is such a limit to these considerations.

Google doesn't have lane data for every road in the world, yet clearly navigation is already implemented to work without it?

I don't know why people throw up random excuses for companies instead of accepting the simplest answer - they want as much data as they can.

Google was able to provide the service before, now they patched it out. So clearly it is not a question of ability to gracefully degrade but of willingness.

> Heck, we are on the verge of a major world conflict where GPS accuracy may be degraded intentionally by the US or jammed by other forces.

During which (brief?) time we will have other pressing concerns beyond degraded mapping services. Why should this temporary condition that on its own is certainly not 'crippling' be an excuse for accepting that Google/Alphabet and like minded corporations want technical approaches that enable them to know everything about us 24/7?

> But it is essential. Google (and Apple) maps provide lane specific navigation directions, which are really only possible with assisted GPS.

Assuming that's true (I'm skeptical), there's no reason why it can't gracefully degrade without the added information.

Regardless, I'm not sure what you mean by lane-specific navigation. Yes, I've seen Google put up a little drawing of the multiple lanes, with the correct lanes for the next turn in bright white, and the incorrect lanes in grey, but that doesn't need to know what lane you're currently in, as it just highlights which lanes are correct and incorrect, regardless of where you are.

My 10 year old navigation device (WindowsCE-based) has no wifi nor celluar and lane specific navigation works fine. Also having lane specific navigation is not essential.

Could you share more information about your device? What is it?

Maps routinely tells me to "use the right two lanes to exit", but it doesn't show any awareness of where I am. It says the same thing whether I'm in the left lane or the exit lanes. Are others getting directions like "merge two lanes to the right to exit"?

Similarly, I wish Maps would tell me the best lane to be in right now so that I have the minimum frustration with being in the proper lane for the next step.

Is nobody capable of looking out the window at the street signs that tell you which lane you need to be in to turn right?

> Google (and Apple) maps provide lane specific navigation directions, which are really only possible with assisted GPS.

lol wtf. Source?

This is google apologetic bs.

This reason is complete nonsense. Google tells you that you need to be in the right lane for a turn regardless of which lane you are actually in.

> But it is essential. description of feature non-essential to navigation

Sure. And stand-alone GPS navigation devices also don't work in cars.

>But it is essential. Google (and Apple) maps provide lane specific navigation directions, which are really only possible with assisted GPS. In theory GPS has the accuracy, but remember you are in a big metal box filled with electrical wires. Not to mention other applications like isle specific navigation within stores, which is made possible by bluetooth beacons.

As someone who's degree had a course in sattelite rangefinding(both code and phase), this is bullshit. Code GPS measurement should be enough for that. Especially when you already contain road data to which you can snap, and probably have access to accelerometer too which can easily improve accuracy of 'snapping'.

You don't need to get precision down to a lane on the road for purpose of navigation, you just need to 'snap' to the right road. and warn user beforehand if they need to take a turn. Just like 'dumb' GPS navigation did prior to smartphone era, while having access to less satellite systems.

> As someone who's degree had a course in sattelite rangefinding

So you are well versed in multipath reflection and why it makes unassisted GPS in urban environments with tall buildings close together almost completely unusable?

> You don't need to get precision down to a lane on the road for purpose of navigation

If you want to build an early 2000s Garmin competitor, sure. But people don't buy $1,500 pocket computers every 18 months to keep doing the same thing.

Are you saying every tomtom, garmin, etc used Bluetooth and cell services for navigation all those years?

Not to be argumentative but dedicated GPS devices didn’t always have that option. Also I’m curious: it uses triangulation off cell towers to help. I don’t see how Bluetooth helps improve accuracy. Do they map WiFi spots accurately?

No, they used other technologies, such as DGPS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS

> Do they map WiFi spots accurately?

Yes, there are a number of companies that maintain BSSID->Lat/Long Databases. Skyhook is probably the biggest commercial one, and https://www.wigle.net/ the biggest open source one.

>So you are well versed in multipath reflection and why it makes unassisted GPS in urban environments with tall buildings close together almost completely unusable?

Yes, a common problem even for static measurements. Yet it worked with 'dumb' gps navigations. Btw - it's not just a p roblem in urban evirorments, especially for phase measurements - you shouldn't do precise measurements near the trees.

Just to illustrate when doing a phase measurement, under good HDOP constellation, next to the forest we barely could achieve an accuracy of half meter using Leica 1200. We measured the same reference point using total station and neighboring network of reference points.

For a reference, you could easily get sub 2cm accuracy, although below 10cm was a minimum target for that job.

>If you want to build an early 2000s Garmin competitor, sure. But people don't buy $1,500 pocket computers every 18 months to keep doing the same thing.

Sure, but it isn't a CORE REQUIREMENT for the service to function. you can degrade it, and have it work pretty well, without requiring all users to submit other tracking data sources.

> Sure, but it isn't a CORE REQUIREMENT for the service to function.

Again, you don't know Maps product roadmap. Google is taking its "Next Billion Users" initiative very seriously internally. They might be looking at ways to offer navigation using only a Wifi/Bluetooth chip so they can make Android devices as cheaply as possible.

There is also the possibility that GPS may not be functional in areas Google wants to serve. The US Government blacked out GPS over multiple states during a test. China has satellites that can rip other countries satellites out of the sky. Russia intentionally crashed an old weather satellite into an Iridium satellite just as a weird flex.

The Google product roadmap has absolutely nothing to do with whether Google maps — which we concretely know can function without network assistance — should REQUIRE said network assistance for all users at present. Yah, the results may be better with network assurance, but it should still work with out it.

This sentiment also applies to your second point — if Google wants to get some kind of navigation working without using gps in some niche market categories, that’s fine. But that shouldn’t require me, with the gps module I paid for in my expensive smartphone, to share data with Google that I don’t want them to have and they don’t technically need.

And i as an user utterly do not care about their roadmap. I care about my experience.

That still does not excuse them for requiring access to those data sources, as they can still degrade service when user does not give consent. Also there are multiple networks at the moment(USA's GPS, Russia's GLONASS, China's COMPASS/BEIDOU(forgot which was geostationary system, and which one was global),and EU's Galileo), which makes total blackout of a single area unlikely.

And quite frankly, in case of total blackout we have a bigger problems than civilian GPS navigation.

Watch your step on that slipper slope

I don't have enough experience with the technical challenges of getting a good signal from a phone's tiny GPS antenna inside a vehicle, but that difficulty shouldn't give a company the right to violate privacy. If hardware is limited, make it better or make the limitation clear to the user and let them decide if they want to give extra data to allow a better experience.

We've had good enough navigation in mobile phones for years, why would they suddenly need to make this change now? And why can't I just keep the slightly worse experience if I prefer GPS-only location?

>But it is essential. Google (and Apple) maps provide lane specific navigation directions, which are really only possible with assisted GPS.

I'm trying very hard to not be sarcastic, but the past 10+ years it was not essential and served me great every time

> But it is essential. Google (and Apple) maps provide lane specific navigation directions, which are really only possible with assisted GPS. In theory GPS has the accuracy, but remember you are in a big metal box filled with electrical wires. Not to mention other applications like isle specific navigation within stores, which is made possible by bluetooth beacons.

Tell me exactly how this bluetooth beacons and WiFi APs will help you to determine the lanes? I did several research projects in this area and RF mapping by indoor beacons for navigating outdoors at vehicular speeds is very hard and unreliable. You don't want to get wrong bearing just because an WiFi AP has been moved to another spot. Nice in theory, BS in practice.

WiFi triangulation is absolutely useless when determining which lane are you on. Your whole comment has been derived from false assumptions.

"But it is essential."

My box full of old TomToms and Garmins guffaws at this patently absurd claim.

Can't believe I'm on this side of the debate, but at what point are we asking too much for free?

Google provide Maps for free to an incredible accuracy and value. Unlike Apple, the user is welcome to use any other app, and yet chooses to use Google Maps.

You could maybe argue that Google Maps is part of a package you bought the phone for, but realistically I think the solution is Google are just open about the use of data (which they are really) and offers a paid solution that doesn't track you.

Selling organs is illegal. Maybe selling your personal / environmental data is too.

Anyone can charge money for access to an app to compensate for value of data.

> and offers a paid solution that doesn't track you.

of Maps?

Hell let’s make selling anything about me illegal: my voice, my image, my ideas, my bodily fluids, especially my time and effort. Then I can finally live off the allowance our caring government will generously offer.

Here, how about a compromise.

They can have my data but they have to pay minimum wage for it.

I like that -- Guaranteed minimum income for anyone willing to sign up for big-tech free services. I think that is an experiment worth conducting.

Minimum price for something just makes it illegal to sell if it happens to be worth less.

If your data is worth that little, which it is, then yeah let's make it illegal for companies to coerce people into giving it up with boilerplate contracts. The impact is too high and the benefit too low.

This is not a slippery slope toward outlawing anything you could possibly sell.

I’ve been giving away "my data" for free stuff since the beginning of the Internet. Still waiting breathlessly for that high impact.

I’m guessing it’s more like being a frog in a stewpot as the temperature slowly rises.

Describe the boiling please.

Easy. The insidious infiltration of advertising and marketing in nearly every aspect of your life. Behind every purchase you make, there's money changing hands between the seller and the person who nudged your hand just a little bit to the left. You're not in control of where you spend your money. Don't notice it? That's the point.

Totally don’t mind it. Sure 99% of people don’t mind it either. I don’t see the actual damage done. Comparing it to "boiling the frog" is ridiculous.

But it surely was an awesome cause for politicians who took this non-issue and made a huge deal out of it. Actual damage done: my browsing UX destroyed and great free services I used every day now under jeopardy.

Congratulations on taking your personal choice and preference and imposing it on the great majority.

What even does "minimum wage" mean in this context? Like, all the time they possess it? The CPU time they spend on it? I'm not sure I understand the sense this makes.

I read it as meaning (minimum wage * full time job), i.e. 40 hours per week.

For this situation, it's easy, it's the entire time I'm driving.

They'd never go anywhere near the idea so I don't feel too much pressure to nail down how it would work for non-real-time data.

They don't have to offer it for free. But I bet that if they stopped, someone else would.

> and offers a paid solution that doesn't track you.

Really? Never heard of that. Can you elaborate?

Google Maps doesn't make money using wifi data. It makes money the way it always does: through ads [0,1].

[0]: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7040605?hl=en

[1]: https://ads.google.com/hotels/

They can sell ads better if they know where you are. Wifi data is making that every easy and battery saving to track.

They already know where you are to a sufficiently high degree of precision with GPS. The battery matters to you, not to Google. Wifi ads next to nothing for Google.

Or more pedantically, Google knows where your device is to a sufficiently high degree of precision. They can't stop me from just leaving that shit home or in a faraday cage.

They also make a fair bit of money selling geofencing services to law enforcement agencies.

> Can't believe I'm on this side of the debate, but at what point are we asking too much for free?

You act like it's consumers moving the line. It's Google. Massively profitable for a long time now, Google. Your argument is that if we resist Google's ever-advancing march deeper into our privacy, that we consumers are the ones who are changing things, making things unfair to poor Google.

>Unlike Apple, the user is welcome to use any other app,

This part of your comment makes no sense to me - how do Apple users not have choice in maps apps...?

you can't set the default maps app in iOS. for example if you tap on an address in an iMessage you'll be directed to Apple maps

At the very least you can get asked which map app you want to use for sure, this is how my phone is set up.

"You could maybe argue that Google Maps is part of a package you bought the phone for"

Microsoft lost the case to be able to directly control the user's browser experience:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

They lost that case in 2001. I honestly doubt they'd lose it today.

Overturned at appeal and afterwards settled. So I wouldn't count it as a loss for Microsoft.

> Google are just open about the use of data

Will. Never. Happen. GLS is dystopian hellscape tracking masquerading under the fig leaf of "anonymity". Its technical details, pretty much a wet dream of the world's spy agencies, will never be revealed.

> at what point are we asking too much for free?

I am a paying customer for a bunch of other Google products.

We’ve also seen with custom domain grandfathering out that they’re not out of options regarding their services terms.

They choose to make Maps free, and there is no option to pay for Maps outside of the API.

“Don’t complain it’s free.” is not a valid argument when it is a revenue making product from a for profit product company. It’s their choice, not ours.

Is it asking to get it for free, or is it regulating how you can monetize it? I don't think the argument is that Google maps has to be free, it's that they can't make you pay for it with your personal data.

That a service is offered for free *does not* mean that the service can request unnecessary privilege for its offering.

> at what point are we asking too much for free?

At the point that they should *STOP*, which is also free.

It’s not free when you’re the product.

Great job regurgitating that line

At the point where Google's failures to release working, marketable, and financially successful projects are causing them to leech off freeware.

Remember openstreetmaps is also free. I fully support freeware being paywalled as that would decimate FAMANG's userbase.

If I ask Google Maps to provide my cycling directions, I get multiple options depending on destination. If I ask Apple Maps, I get an apology that directions are not available in my area. I don't think Googs is using openstreetmaps data

I don’t think Apple Maps use OSM correctly, otherwise they wouldn’t suggest me walking over a bridge that has been disused and partially disassembled a decade ago. OSMAnd doesn’t do that, for example.

Please tell me this comment was written by some Google AI..

Google is a large monopoly that subsidizes “free” products to burn a thousand mile clearing around their money engine.

If Google maps was not free, there would be more of a market for competing mapping products.

A mapping product has a natural intersection with advertisements - a non-negligible number of mapped trips are commercial in nature, and can thus catch consumers right before the moment of purchase. This might prove fertile ground for a new competitor.

So Google gives maps away, and anyone who wants to compete has to compete with free, and starts with a tremendous data disadvantage.

Through this lens, requiring you to disclose more data makes sense. They strengthen their data moat around the free product, which in turn protects their dominant position in ads.

I would like to see regulators crack down on this kind of anti-competitive behavior.

Makes me wonder, was the DoJ right that it was bad for Microsoft to bundle Internet Explorer for free? I know it sounds insane now to have an OS without a browser, but was this the “original sin” that permanently warped expectations for what amounts people should be willing to pay for software?

Even today, outside of gaming/entertainment, the consumer software market is basically a wasteland. But if you had to pay for a browser today (pick your favorite), how much would that be worth to you? (Netscape cost $50! Or $90 in today’s equivalent.) I can’t think of any other market where we expect so much in exchange for paying so little.

Most likely today’s end state was inevitable; if MSFT hadn’t bundled IE, someone else would have made a similar play and capitalized on the network effects.

you could make similar arguments for any integrated or bundled technology. even products like microsoft office which knocked out competition back in the day when there were competing spreadsheet packages.

where it gets philosophically interesting is how this integration can cut across dimensions. software can be bundled horizontally, and software+hardware+commerce+service can be bundled vertically.

integration often leads to smoother experiences for end users at reduced cost, but comes at the expense of winner take all economics in the marketplace.

finding the right balance across both dimensions will be the great challenge for 21st century technology regulation. it's unclear to me how much antitrust experience from the past will help with this (or if consolidation may actually be desirable, freeing up capacity for new problems)

Thank you :-) I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I'm sad not seeing it reported more often.

I consider that Google Maps being free stagnated the maps market, and stopped any innovation from happening. Often when I say this, I get "But OpenStreetMap". When only volunteers can compete, that's a definite proof something's wrong.

(though arguably Google Maps did improve a bit over time, while gmail really didn't at all)

It's worth pointing out that OpenStreetMap has Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook and many other corporate contributors and they are contributing huge amounts of data, all the time, everywhere.

"Apple Maps, is by far the most prolific current corporate editor and was responsible for almost 80% of all edits to pre-existing roads in 2018."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-19/openstree... https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jennings%20Anderson/diary...

Openstreetmap has never been volunteer only, but to be fair its only in the last decade that we've seen this change.

This bandwagon only happened because OSM gained traction, sometime in the 2010s. Sure, popularity breeds more popularity, afterwards. Even for all this, the biggest single event that boosted interest in OSM was, ironically, Google imposing far stricter gratis limits on its Maps, a few years back (2018, IIRC?)

I do btw, fully agree. If Google Search was forced to exist as an independent company it would radically affect (I believe for the better) the finance model of the rest of their products and help the market as a whole.

> at what point are we asking too much for free?

But isn't this reasoning sort of paradox? Google is asking for something here in exchange of allowing to use the navigation feature. That makes it by definition not free - it's just, there is no straight-forward monetary price to it.

You can redefine "free" as "any price other than money" - and lots of people in tech seem to do exactly that - but then, if done honestly, you'd have to allow people to reason about non-monetary prices in the same way as about monetary ones: Compare them, decide about fairness, etc.

What scares me is that frequently, this isn't done - on the contrary: A developer can make its users jump through all kinds of hoops and demand whatever they want - and all is ok because it's "free"!

> Unlike Apple, the user is welcome to use any other app, and yet chooses to use Google Maps.

iPhones let you install Google Maps, you're not locked in to Apple Maps.

If the business model Google themselves created will somehow fail if we don't continue to allow them to suck more and more private data out of us then so be it. They will have to change their business model. I am not interested in changing to accommodate them.

By the way, there is nothing free here. All of those advertising dollars come out of our pockets via increased products costs.

Fine, so give me a Google Maps subscription price that does not show me ads, does not save my location history. I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid ads, I would pay for a privacy-preserving and ad-free Google Maps. Maps and navigation is the only reason I have a smartphone. If they can't offer that, I'll buy a feature phone and a Garmin Drive or some other device for nav.

Genuine Question: Does paying for YouTube Premium prevent them from accessing your viewing data to better serve you ads elsewhere? I suspect it doesn't, but haven't really thought about it before

Yes you can use other mapping apps on iOS.

On the other hand, Google has often played hardball with manufacturers who wanted to include other location technology…

https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-l...

This encourages a classist system where the affluent get to keep their data private and the poor working class' data is open season for companies to exploit and use for oppressive purposes.

Not been free for me, pre-installed on all the Android Phone I have bought, part of the purchased product.

I got hit with this pop-up. It is a charade, despite the UI making it feel like a technical requirement.

And here is how I know it is a charade: voice navigation and the map itself both work perfectly in the background of this undismissable pop-up.

This is the most coerced I've felt in a long time and I can't help but feel that maybe iOS users don't feel this way.

>and it also breaches Google Play's developer agreement

Why do you think the Goog's apps are bound to the same terms as other developers? That agreement allows devs use Goog's services.

Of course, though giving yourself an advantage over competitors in a market you control is also illegal, so they should at least try to keep up the appearances.

> giving yourself an advantage over competitors in a market you control is also illegal

Is it? Doesn't seem to be a problem for Apple/Ios.

It arguably may allow the navigation to be more accurate, even if a tiny amount, though it obviously isn't strictly required since navigation works without the data.

>and the least they could do to follow the law is to gracefully degrade the service

They were already doing it and asking us to turn on camera to "better calibrate my location".

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