A very good feature of gmail’s extensive “email intelligence” that grew out of Inbox. How did you think the Purchases label worked? How did you think Google Now alerts you on your mobile when your packages are delivered?
If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label works.
Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay your bills.
Also when you browse Google maps you can see reservation dates on hotels and other venues. I thought the fact that Google scrapes emails to power other services was obvious by now.
I've always assumed they do this since they've recognized and surfaced flight and event information for years.
I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable.
Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" etc.
To counter on the point of "Google of old might have done something cool with this info"
This is very, VERY subjective. Even if Google did something like "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" there will be very similar posts detailing how 'Google reads your monthly payment data'.
Sure, but they're already reading your monthly payment data.
My point was just that Google gets and (probably) analyzes aggregate payment information but the user only gets what they already know. If Google is sucking up all of that data, they could at least give some insights to users too.
Now I'm curious to know if they're using this info to analyze competitor marketshare and/or set prices for competing services.
Completely agree about fastmail. Been a happy customer for a few years now. Easy to migrate from gmail too. Enjoying it all the more since the "upgrade" of gmail's web-ui.
Fastmail isn't free, but I think the old adage "if you're given a really cool product for free, then the product us you" applies here. If you're ok with that, that's cool. But if you're not, there are some great options out there.
> "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" etc.
This is not how it works. More like "we see you desperately need something because of your circumstances and we offer you only the premium price". Not explicitly of course.
Google is in the business of advertising. They do not stand to profit from giving you that information, unless they had an affiliate link from an advertiser that offered similar services for a lower price who'd be willing to pay X to acquire a new customer.
While this level of ad targeting is not available, based on the gmails they read, they have it on your profile.
Also, you can always buy your own domain name for a few dollars and take it with you anywhere, hosting with reliable email providers.
I wonder if they could build a service to help people switch to the cheapest options, through affiliates obviously. I've heard that's the long term business model of challenger banks which see your bills, but Google have that data too if you get bills emailed and are probably better positioned to build it if they wanted to.
what would be really cool is if they could add an annotation to an email job offer... something like "This offer appears to be 15% lower than what other candidates have been offered for a similar position".
Your agreement with Google allows them to use your data on your behalf. The feature you suggested uses your data to benefit other people, or other people’s data to benefit you. Even when aggregated that violates the agreement.
If you used Inbox, it also categorizes flights, hotels, calendar entries, restaurant reservations, bills, newsletters, forums, social media updates, and a host of other useful functions, extracting out entities. The Finances, Purchases, and Trips bundles are extremely useful.
This information isn't solely surfaceable in Inbox or Gmail UI, go to any Google Search box and type "my purchases" or "my flights" or "my reservations".
You can't think up a single reason why you might not want every purchase you've made in your entire life to be logged in a centralized database completely outside of your control and view which will be kept forever and shared with an unknowable amount of unknown powerful entities that do not care about your well-being?
Some people are going to have a very rough time when reality finally strikes them with all of its might. Perhaps it won't be you, but it will happen.
Retailers and Credit Card companies have been trading your purchasing data for decades. Acxiom has made billions doing exactly that since the 90s. "Database marketing" companies are just ad networks based on consumer purchasing behavior they buy from retailers and CC companies.
The difference is that those data brokers are just terrible at actually delivering products and value from the data they are getting. At least Google can make their "free" services better as a result.
If all they're doing is presenting your data in a better way then it's great.
However, it's very likely that they're also selling adverts based on that data, and possibly selling the data itself. Do you really want your health insurance provider to be able to buy a list of restaurant bookings you've made? Or how about the airline you're about to book with knowing what you paid a competitor last time so they don't need to discount their prices for you to buy?
Would you be happy paying more for things because you use Gmail?
I think this comment is a great example of why I think most of the privacy concerns, especially around Google these days, are mostly overblown.
I am not afraid of that example happening because that is not how Google operates.
Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox.
The advertiser has absolutely no idea who I am, and google never "sold my data".
Who would even by such data in any volume meaningful enough for Google to consider it as a source of revenue compared to ads, especially given the privacy concerns?
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Google's own terms even explicitly prevent them from revealing my identity in such a way.
To be Frank, I have a suspicion that HN has been bamboozled by a continuous Apple smear campaign. When Android started becoming more of a threat, and they pretty obviously couldn't take on things like Maps, they defaulted to an argument that they sort of have by default, by virtue of the fact that they sell hardware, not software: Privacy.
And they're not even that good at it. Remember the mac root mistake not too long ago? Google actually has to maintain strict data privacy to survive. Apple, not so much. It's an easy argument for them to promote, and people are lapping it up.
Google had a "data extraction team" (I forget what it was actually called), before it was even cool. It was a team internally years ago that was like, "people have a right to view, export, and remove their own data, so we're going to build that into Google products." And they were allowed to do that. Like, years ago. A long time before this recent wave of skepticism started. I always appreciated that. You heard stories of that kind of thing from Google, then. Hardly ever competitors.
When I first read this was I was troubled, and I am certainly a Google critic, but it seems to specifically say this is for your usage only. It's not being used for their ad network or for them to see behavior. It's used in the same manner as tracking packages, etc. If or when they start using this for their own internal usage to see use purchasing behavior, and telling adwords customers what purchase/products were popular so they could convert, that's when I'd have a major problem with this. As it stands now, I don't see it as a major problem.
If a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. So today you don't see a major problem. Even though every single purchase you made in your entire life is being logged in a central database that's out of your control. OK. You are slowly being brought to a boil, and you're not perceiving the danger.
The legend of the frog being boiled slowly is actually completely false (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog). The frog will simply jump out when it notices that it gets too hot. Likewise, it's pretty easy to see the distinction between Google using information to help people vs. using information for profit.
It's also likely that Google buys a copy of your credit card purchase history.
>Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.
Google reads all Gmail messages, presumably for targeted advertising. In this case it looks like they're giving folks a UI to look at (some of) what they're gathering.
Am I overreacting by seriously considering starting the process of migrating from gmail? It's not this singular incident of course, but just the continued pattern of behavior from Google for the last couple years. I really have lost all faith in them respecting their users.
Apparently we're late to migrate, but I recently started the move to RainLoop:
https://www.rainloop.net/ is actually much better software in my opinion, and is self-hosted unlike FastMail.
Rainloop satisfies the need for polished, smooth, elegant, yet simple "feeling" interfaces like Gmail finally became.
Handles multiple identities, multiple accounts, and contacts well; but no calendar.
Way better than Zimbra webmail, though that does have Calendars. On my local machine, I still use RainLoop rather than a traditional email client, it's that good.
ProtonMail, also mentioned, doesn't seem far off, but seems to lack the extra polish. It's in the neighborhood of RainLoop though, it would appear.
I dropped Gmail years ago, but mostly because my only real reason for still having a google account at all was reader. By that point gmail had just become my spam bin
These days I host my own anyway, and have a blargh@host mail account I use to sign up for things (typically blargh+thewebstie@host so I can track who is selling email addresses)
I did, and I found out it's actually not as hard as you would think. I think I even prefer FastMail's web client. Register your own domain, own the address, and then future migrations are way easier.
Move to Fastmail if that's what your after. You are using a free service, because you are the product. That's not about respect, it's about your (lack) of understanding of the business relationship you entered. If you aren't comfortable with that, you're going to have to pay actual money.
What assurances do you have that those paid services are actually respecting your privacy? It wasn’t that long ago that we found out that telecom companies were selling fine location data of all their paying customers.
The reality is that irresponsibility and disrespect for users are rampant in the tech world. That’s entirely companies’ doing.
Readit News
If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label works.
Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay your bills.
Where? On every device a user owns?
I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable.
Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" etc.
This is very, VERY subjective. Even if Google did something like "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" there will be very similar posts detailing how 'Google reads your monthly payment data'.
My point was just that Google gets and (probably) analyzes aggregate payment information but the user only gets what they already know. If Google is sucking up all of that data, they could at least give some insights to users too.
Now I'm curious to know if they're using this info to analyze competitor marketshare and/or set prices for competing services.
My ancient @mac.com email address still works (I think it's 16 years old now). So does my girlfriend's @me.com. You're worrying about wrong things.
And Apple keeps the old domains, so my me.com email works fine. I never use icloud.com.
Fastmail isn't free, but I think the old adage "if you're given a really cool product for free, then the product us you" applies here. If you're ok with that, that's cool. But if you're not, there are some great options out there.
This is not how it works. More like "we see you desperately need something because of your circumstances and we offer you only the premium price". Not explicitly of course.
While this level of ad targeting is not available, based on the gmails they read, they have it on your profile.
Also, you can always buy your own domain name for a few dollars and take it with you anywhere, hosting with reliable email providers.
This information isn't solely surfaceable in Inbox or Gmail UI, go to any Google Search box and type "my purchases" or "my flights" or "my reservations".
It's already in my email, which they host. I don't see why I should not want this feature, where they aggregate helpful information for me.
Some people are going to have a very rough time when reality finally strikes them with all of its might. Perhaps it won't be you, but it will happen.
I use venmo - they have it too.
My credit card companies are private companies. Where's the outrage regarding them?
Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news.
The difference is that those data brokers are just terrible at actually delivering products and value from the data they are getting. At least Google can make their "free" services better as a result.
However, it's very likely that they're also selling adverts based on that data, and possibly selling the data itself. Do you really want your health insurance provider to be able to buy a list of restaurant bookings you've made? Or how about the airline you're about to book with knowing what you paid a competitor last time so they don't need to discount their prices for you to buy?
Would you be happy paying more for things because you use Gmail?
I am not afraid of that example happening because that is not how Google operates.
Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox.
The advertiser has absolutely no idea who I am, and google never "sold my data".
Who would even by such data in any volume meaningful enough for Google to consider it as a source of revenue compared to ads, especially given the privacy concerns?
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Google's own terms even explicitly prevent them from revealing my identity in such a way.
To be Frank, I have a suspicion that HN has been bamboozled by a continuous Apple smear campaign. When Android started becoming more of a threat, and they pretty obviously couldn't take on things like Maps, they defaulted to an argument that they sort of have by default, by virtue of the fact that they sell hardware, not software: Privacy.
And they're not even that good at it. Remember the mac root mistake not too long ago? Google actually has to maintain strict data privacy to survive. Apple, not so much. It's an easy argument for them to promote, and people are lapping it up.
Google had a "data extraction team" (I forget what it was actually called), before it was even cool. It was a team internally years ago that was like, "people have a right to view, export, and remove their own data, so we're going to build that into Google products." And they were allowed to do that. Like, years ago. A long time before this recent wave of skepticism started. I always appreciated that. You heard stories of that kind of thing from Google, then. Hardly ever competitors.
>Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-...
Finding that tidbit out was my own personal bridge too far.
https://www.rainloop.net/ is actually much better software in my opinion, and is self-hosted unlike FastMail.
Rainloop satisfies the need for polished, smooth, elegant, yet simple "feeling" interfaces like Gmail finally became.
Handles multiple identities, multiple accounts, and contacts well; but no calendar.
Way better than Zimbra webmail, though that does have Calendars. On my local machine, I still use RainLoop rather than a traditional email client, it's that good.
ProtonMail, also mentioned, doesn't seem far off, but seems to lack the extra polish. It's in the neighborhood of RainLoop though, it would appear.
Firefox, DDG, Fastmail, etc are all perfectly good enough and don't make me feel dirty.
These days I host my own anyway, and have a blargh@host mail account I use to sign up for things (typically blargh+thewebstie@host so I can track who is selling email addresses)
There's also the option of running your own server, but it seems deliverability is an issue.
Move to Fastmail if that's what your after. You are using a free service, because you are the product. That's not about respect, it's about your (lack) of understanding of the business relationship you entered. If you aren't comfortable with that, you're going to have to pay actual money.
The reality is that irresponsibility and disrespect for users are rampant in the tech world. That’s entirely companies’ doing.
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