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Comment by MilnerRoute | Hacker News Reader

Here's my Google story. I was planning a trip to a remote mountain town, to completely separate from all the big tech giants. So I went online to review the map to the cabin we'd rented...

And Google added a pushpin to the cabin where I was staying, along with the dates for the entirety of my stay.

They'd scanned my Gmail inbox, found the reservation, extracted the dates and location, and then waited until I went to Google Maps for driving directions.

There's a way to turn off some of this -- which I immediately hunted down and activated. But it still bothers me that I didn't know it was on by default.

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If that data is already in the Google ecosystem, what does it matter?

What does it buy you or protect you from? You are totally irrelevant to Google as a datapoint as you are just another ID lost in the noise. It only matters when who you are suddenly becomes important. If you stay unimportant then who really cares?

Well for one, often you don’t get a choice whether you’re deemed important or not. People go viral unwillingly every day.

Many people, myself included, commit small crimes like jaywalking and smoking weed often, and would prefer an all-seeing eye not watch my every move.

Last but not least, I’m not interested in helping a trillion dollar corporation profit off of my private data.

That's why Amazon minimizes the information it sends by email for order confirmation. Amazon is locked in a deadly fight with Google over which is going to be the first port of call when someone is looking to buy something (Amazon is winning, by the way, their ad business is already generating 50% as much revenue as AWS), and they certainly don't want to give Google any data uf they can help it.

Huh? My order emails contain the product name, price, expected delivery date, my name and city, doesn't feel like anything is minimised.

Why turn it off? Google are still going to parse your emails and pull out details about bookings to build a better profile of you, no matter what settings you disable. So why not have them do something useful for you while they are doing it?

I think it's creepy as well, but as a counterpoint my wife is delighted by stuff like this. She finds it convenient and helpful, and I can't say she's wrong.

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