I mean sure. Google certainly doesn't want wireless carriers to compete with them in advertising, and everyone having access to location data from smartphones just devalues Google's own access.
The big difference is Google doesn't sell that data to third parties; they just use it for ad targeting. There's a big difference between the company that makes my phone's OS knowing my location, and anyone willing to pay a few bucks knowing the same.
(Also it looks like in the situation described in the article you linked, they didn't even use the data for ad targeting: "we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID".)
The difference exists only to the point that Google is an ethical owner of the data. I'm concerned that Google is in the business selling products based on a monopoly of consumer data. These products are likely to become more and more invasive as time goes on.. It's possible that a future Google product will become a larger threat to privacy than geolocation because they have a wider variety of data collected.
In summary, today's Google handles geolocation much better than telecom companies, but the mass of personal data Google collects makes their potential future activity concerning.
That's pretty much a straw man argument. Any company in the ad business will exploit collected data to the extent possible by law. Whether that data resides solely with one company or with many won't change that. The fundamental question we should be asking ourselves is what a company is allowed to do with our personal data.
As far as the advertising is concerned Google is no different(and so FB etc). Anyone with few bucks will know your location or better said will target you with ads. With Google they won't target only by location because as you said Google makes the OS so it knows pretty much everything about you.
Yeah, I was going to say... Of course Google made this demand. It's a no-brainer. Not only does it help ensure their competitors aren't profiting from the same data that Google does, but also its a beautiful PR stunt.
Not to say that they shouldn't be making this demand, but we should all keep in mind that they're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts or because it's the ethical thing to do.
I much much much rather have the companies with a public image to uphold be the keepers of this data. There are soooo many scuzzy people out there. Beyond that, the US is highly due for both public records laws that make sense in the internet age, as well as digital data as a product, needs to have similar laws put in place.
To be honest, there really shouldn't be websites out there that know you and your family members and your phone numbers. This stuff should be under lock and key and require special PI licences to get access.
It's actually not so different from seeing Verizon lately "fight for user privacy" by lobbying for bills that would regulate "edge providers"-only, as opposed to lobbying for more general GDPR-style privacy bills that would also affect them. They actually did the opposite previously and fought to get the new FTC chairman to kill the broadband privacy rules "so that they can be on equal footing with Google/Facebook" (right before asking for regulation against Google/Facebook later on).
They're all just trying to take their competitors down a few notches. You can't take any company that wants to profit from advertising and data sharing/selling seriously in regards to "fighting for privacy".
Google was recently found to be illegally tracking Android users' location, once by "mistake" and the second time they were ignoring their location tracking opt-outs. I don't even remember their reasoning for the second one - but who cares, it was a lie anyway.
I think there is a difference between allowing ads to target an area and selling someone's real time location. I'm against the collection of data generally because that data can always end up in court, but Google has never given people access to my real time location.
Google's own location timeline also can be used in court, and is updated in near real-time.[1]
Practically speaking, I would think that Google's data is even more susceptible to be found in court and used in that manner than data held and passed on by smaller, relatively unknown apps that lawyers may not even know are installed on locked phones.
You have a good point about there being a larger surface area and more weak points when more than one entity handles data, but I'd also be wary of heavy-handed regulations along that dividing line. I don't think we need to give Google monopoly rights to another big chunk of the ad industry. If a user might prefer an entity other than Google handle certain pieces of their data (maybe they strike a more transparent and rewarding deal than Google), they should have that choice.
> but Google has never given people access to my real time location.
As long as your Google account remains secured and no one manages to sneak a 2nd Google Account on your phone, that is. Find My Phone is a real time tracker that can be abused e.g. by spouses or stalkers. IIRC only triggering the "audible ring" leaves a trace on the phone (a notification + the obvious sound), to check if someone used FMP for tracking one has to dive deep into the Google Activity Logs.
Only way to protect yourself is, of course, to disable GPS on the phone - but what if you want to use Maps or another navigation at the same time?
Well, kinda but there's some definite shades of gray here.
EDIT - for example I'm not sure the original "Bounty hunters" use case would be facilitated by Google's targeted ads. There's a big gap between "I might be able to target ads at people in a narrow geographical area" and "I can find our where someone lives"
Unfortunately, the data underlying both use cases is the same.
In order to target adds "at people in a narrow geographical area" I need to know when those people are in that "narrow geographical area". I.e., I need to know their location to an accuracy good enough to say they are in that "narrow geographical area" (or in this case, their phones location, which is a good proxy for their location).
Once I can know "the phones location" to a level of accuracy to make "narrow geographical area" targeted ads profitable, all I have to do is average several overnight readings of 'location' together to get a very good estimate of "where someone lives".
I trust Google a lot more than I trust all of these telcos. I think the big difference is while Google does have pretty much all my info, I know they do and roughly what they do with it. Flip side, I know the cell providers have some of my info but I've no idea what happens to it once it's sold.
While I understand the sentiment of this comment, isn't it still a good thing to reduce the number of companies with this data? As the companies that track your location goes down, it becomes easier to argue against the other ones doing it. Plus in the very least less places that could leak the data, so it would still be some form of progress.
>isn't it still a good thing to reduce the number of companies with this data?
Maybe you want multiple companies competing in the same realm rather than Google handling most of the private data and becoming incredibly powerful. Maybe you want to unmask Google's motives so as to not play into their PR strategy.
Google is not only worried about the competition, they are more likely more concerned with potential legislation. There is now bipartisan support for legislation to stop this practice. It could soon be next that there is regulation not allowing sale of this info or advertising based on it.
Consumers don't expect to be GPS tracked everywhere and have companies profit on that data. Granting location permission to us here means that because we know, but most people would consider giving weather.com access to your location just helpful to get your forecast. Even if it is nestled in the privacy policy. What is next? You download a camera app and then every photo is sent to someone who turns AI on it to learn about you? (could already be happening) Oh but it was in the privacy policy that we may share data with third parties.
I would also like to point out that corporations are made of people, many people, with diverse opinions, beliefs and motivations, and that corporate actions frequently arise from multiple decision-makers within a company.
So we could come up with a hundred explanations for why Google took this action in this thread, some cynical, some conspiratorial, some altruistic and idealistic. And frankly, half of them would probably be sort-of correct, in that one or more of the decision-makers and their advisers might have considered that point or used it as a basis of their decision.
Occasionally you can state cleanly, "Company X did Y because Z", but it's usually more complicated than that. And when it is a case of "Company X did Y because A, B and C and despite I, J, K", you rarely have the information to reason out all of the variables that went into a decision, unless the matter is of such historical importance that you get the 27 books written after the fact based on years of investigation and interviews.
Your comment doesn't make any sense. Wireless carriers will always have access to location (based on cell towers) and don't have successful advertising businesses.
In India Google operates one of the largest Fiber Backed project called Railwire. It's a GOI enterprise, but we can say that officals are effectively bribed to participate in data harvesting schemes and enriching a few officials and one big American company.
Google offers this company internet technology expertise in return of harvesting data from railway stations, Users of the ISP called Railwire.
Basically, they set your DNS to Google's DNS and Google captures what websites are popular in these specific regions.
You can change your DNS obviously but 90% users don't bother and it doesn't save you from deep packet inspection.
Google also harvests non Https websites and run deep packet inspection of the traffic.
They don't sell your location data, they sell targeting options for specific geographic locations. These are quite different. I'm okay with seeing an ad targeted at anyone within walking distance of a cafe. I'm not okay with my personal location getting sold to whoever thinks they have a valuable enough use for it.
So many people are saying "this is just further evidence of Google doing evil".
Unpopular opinion: I feel like this is further evidence of Google being good stewards of user data.
There are many reasons Google may want to protect this data: They don't want user backlash from revelations like this, they don't want to have to be legislated, they don't want the PR spend of having to recover from such reporting. Or it could be that it is a company built of people who find such protection to be important.
Google, data point for data point, is one of the best stewards of data potentially in history.
They have more information about you that they choose not to sell than you can even imagine. They literally set the high-bar for PII and other types of tracking data.
The only ones who know nearly as much are Telcos and they have been openly selling and sharing all of your info to governments and shady shell corporations since day 1.
Edit - Forgot that Facebook is catching up to Google on data and they have been a leaky cup since day one as well.
Selling mass location data to the highest bidder is indeed extremely slimy and even a threat to "national security".
But the fact that Google (or any centralized entity) has aggregated so much detailed information on billions of people's personal lives is itself a threat to global/national security.
What happens when that data is hacked/leaked and then sold to the highest bidder (who isn't interested in advertising)? That data could be easily weaponized for a shocking/devastating attack the likes of which we have not seen since the first atomic bomb.
When it comes to siphoning location data from Android devices, it looks like Google only cares about updating its help pages, and not really about addressing the actual points in such a backlash. There is no evidence on this topic that Google cares about a backlash or PR spend or anything else. All its actions show that Google wants more and more data, and that it wants to be the one that gets all the data.
How people's sentiments change here based on who tries to protect their privacy. If it's Apple, "wow, they are god's own people with purest intentions of protecting users' privacy". When Google does it : "Yeah, because they want to sell it themselves so obviously they don't want any competition".
One is a massive advertising company that makes the vast majority of it's money on advertising and has a history of invasive privacy issues.
The other one AFAIK doesn't sell user data, has publicly denied to help the FBI (Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied), and has put in a large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down).
Obviously this doesn't mean apple doesn't do bad things behind the scenes, but based on the information available to us is why people trust them more with privacy then google.
> Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied
Google literally lead the charge on this with their transparency report for government data requests and won huge victories in allowing for the reporting of things like FISA requests.
It's great that Apple has followed Google's lead and also publishes a transparency report, but their own report also clearly shows that they DO comply with government requests: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
And both Google & Apple have comparable percentages of requests honored per their own reports.
Regardless an "assume complied" is an illogical position to take here. Assume a company did work that they didn't have to for one-off requests? That's a safe thing to assume they didn't do. Assume they did nothing, because that's way easier, cheaper, and simpler for them. Which means assume they didn't help anyone, including the FBI.
> large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down).
No. iOS / OSX are locked down to prevent competition. There's no privacy benefit in keeping the user from poking at their own device.
Apple did a lot of work specifically to enable apps to do things like track a user's location in the background. Things that didn't used to be possible, but which Apple put in work to do. The only significant thing they did here on iOS was make it a runtime permission, which other platforms have similarly done. OSX continues to have no real restrictions or enforcement for apps, except to try and prevent you from installing them outside of the app store.
They put more effort into bragging about their privacy than they did in actually improving privacy. Advertising turns out to be extremely effective, as Apple frequently proves.
Apple is saying "we do not want to write code to compromise device security", which is different than "not helping the FBI". They are obliged to and do provide access to things like iOS backups, etc.
These companies are neither good nor evil. End of the day, if you care about privacy, cleartext cannot be in the custody of a third party.
That's pretty easy to conclude based on the business models of said companies. Why would anyone want to reach a different conclusion, especially when Google has shown apathy towards location data collection on Android, bypassing Safari's cookie handling to track users, etc.? The writing on the wall is crystal clear.
It's simple. Apple doesn't use location data in their products. Google does. Apple specifically avoids these types of products. Google's main revenue stream depends on them.
This is about partnering with carriers that do bad things. One company that partnered with these carriers said "stop that" (granted not with enough eagerness/transparency for me). Another that partners with carriers remains mum.
> Apple specifically avoids these types of products.
No, Apple specifically partners with the companies selling this stuff and don't care at all. They could easily issue a statement saying they disagree with those they shake hands and share money with, but they won't. Google will though.
Because its hard to believe Google is protecting our privacy instead of protecting its own turf. Google does that, Apple doesn't. The interesting case would be if Microsoft still had a horse in the game. Given Windows 10 you might see the same reaction.
Oh, Apple does when it is required to make money, like in China. They handed over all iCloud data to the government.
Companies are companies, they don't "care" about privacy, or anything at all. Google, Apple, Facebook, they're all in this for the money. And that is fine.
You enjoy using iMessages on your android phone and Linux laptop do you?
Yeah, yeah, it’s different. Except that it’s the same in the areas in which each competes. There’s plenty of examples of Apple freezing out others from a market.
Ask HN: Is anyone here happy with Google Fi service? I ordered a Pixel 3 phone directly from Google Fi and signed up for service with Google Fi the end of December. When I ordered the phone it showed up as in stock and estimated I would get my phone by the 4th of January. On the 2nd I got an email saying that the phone shipping was delayed and I would receive an email when it ships. I have heard nothing from google so I called Google Fi support and was told I would get an email from the shipping team letting my know when my phone would ship but that was 2 days ago and have not heard a word from them. I tried following there instructions to cancel the order but when you click the edit order button where they say there is a cancel button none can be found. Anyone else have similar experience? Before I placed my order I was thinking the user experience from Google must be better then T-Mobile or Sprint but I am starting to regret the choice.
Note: I'm a Googler but I've used Fi since its inception and log before I was a Googler. These are my thoughts alone.
I have had times where it took 45 minutes to reach Fi support which was very frustrating. And looking on the Google Fi subreddit you're not the only one with the shipping issues. That being said, I've only had outstanding interactions with their support department. I had reoccurring problems with my Nexus 6P and they RMAd it several times, overnight.
I've found their coverage and WiFi calling to be better here in Mountain View than Verizon. It is hard to beat their experience when travelling internationally, you pay the same as you would domestically, and you have access to the high speed networks. The Fi app is beautiful, and doesn't try to sell you anything. I recently checked out the Verizon app and its 90% ads and 10% useful.
I've used Fi since getting a Pixel 2 just over a year ago. I haven't had any issues with it and can't comment on the quality of their support. The coverage and service is as you'd expect from Sprint & T-mobile. I've used the built-in VPN feature with no noticeable drop in speed or connection, even when switching from cell to wifi.
I've ordered 2 phones through Google Fi and both were shipped very quickly. Trade-in of old phone via mail also went perfectly. So far Fi's execution has been great.
The phones were cheap (Nexus 5X 32GB for $250, Moto x4 64GB for $300) and the monthly cost is extremely low for someone who doesn't use a lot of data.
My Pixel 3 was delayed several weeks with no ability to cancel or understand why or get status info. Then it was delivered. So, really crappy fulfillment experience but the phone is great and the data service coverage has been a little better than it was with my old provider.
I've been on it for a month and have been really happy with the service. That said I brought my own devices and haven't had to deal with the support team at all.
Sounds like your phone was so delayed because of a huge black friday promotion they ran that put their pixel stock a month or more behind back orders. My experience with them, outside of this one massive underestimate of how many phones they would sell because of the phenomenal deal that they ran, has been really good. Phones are normally in stock and ship almost immediately. And customer service is very responsive.
As a side note, the phone that I snagged during that promotion just barely arrived a week ago. And I ordered it at the end of November. I think you just ran into some unlucky timing, at least in regards to the delays in shipments that you encountered.
I like it. Support had been fast and helpful, and it's hard to beat for international travel. I've used it in 5 countries with good speeds (although I've mostly been in cities). And as an added bonus it gets around the firewall in China. I've seen people try TMobile here and it's definitely slower than Fi, although it also gets around the firewall.
I hate the idea that we're so beholden to one company's ethical compass over another. It's so clear that we're in need for some sort of regulation to great guideposts around what is ok and what is not... sigh... not like the government will ever get its act together on this.
Why, because they show you ads for tracked interests? Something they're quite upfront about, and allow you to opt-out of if you'd like.
Is that so "evil" that it somehow outweighs the hundreds of open-source projects they've released? Or the extremely useful free-services they provide like Maps and Search? The thousands of jobs they've created in our industry? The new protocols they've released for free to the IETF? The security bugs they've helped uncover?
Google does an immense amount of good for society. I don't understand how people can so easily lose sight of that.
Dragonfly is a complex topic. The good part about it is that Google is still having a conversation about it and hasn't launched the product once it was publicly known.
Note that I was born in India and have different views than American citizens due to having first hand experience with what information can do to transform lives.
Compare to Apple, which actually handed over the iCloud keys of all its Chinese customers to the Chinese government.
We should continue to pressure Google to make fewer mistakes like these, but let's not pretend they're in the same league as truly bad actors like Apple and Facebook when it comes to privacy.
I think it's this case it was more of a case that they didn't stand to make money themselves from T-mobile and Sprint selling that data to others, since it's not something they could control.
As shrewd and cynical as this move is, it is good. With Google you at least have some options for how much you want them to know about your location (even if they rely on dark patterns still to trick average people into reenabling it)
"... as soon as we heard about this practice, we required our network partners to shut it down as soon as possible.” Google did not say when it made this a requirement.
Readit News
https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...
(Also it looks like in the situation described in the article you linked, they didn't even use the data for ad targeting: "we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID".)
In summary, today's Google handles geolocation much better than telecom companies, but the mass of personal data Google collects makes their potential future activity concerning.
Not to say that they shouldn't be making this demand, but we should all keep in mind that they're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts or because it's the ethical thing to do.
To be honest, there really shouldn't be websites out there that know you and your family members and your phone numbers. This stuff should be under lock and key and require special PI licences to get access.
It's only a PR stunt if they publicized it -- it's not a stunt if they did it without making it public.
It's a PR win for sure, but that doesn't make it a PR stunt.
They're all just trying to take their competitors down a few notches. You can't take any company that wants to profit from advertising and data sharing/selling seriously in regards to "fighting for privacy".
Google was recently found to be illegally tracking Android users' location, once by "mistake" and the second time they were ignoring their location tracking opt-outs. I don't even remember their reasoning for the second one - but who cares, it was a lie anyway.
Practically speaking, I would think that Google's data is even more susceptible to be found in court and used in that manner than data held and passed on by smaller, relatively unknown apps that lawyers may not even know are installed on locked phones.
You have a good point about there being a larger surface area and more weak points when more than one entity handles data, but I'd also be wary of heavy-handed regulations along that dividing line. I don't think we need to give Google monopoly rights to another big chunk of the ad industry. If a user might prefer an entity other than Google handle certain pieces of their data (maybe they strike a more transparent and rewarding deal than Google), they should have that choice.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2015/11/06/how-law-enforcement-can-...
As long as your Google account remains secured and no one manages to sneak a 2nd Google Account on your phone, that is. Find My Phone is a real time tracker that can be abused e.g. by spouses or stalkers. IIRC only triggering the "audible ring" leaves a trace on the phone (a notification + the obvious sound), to check if someone used FMP for tracking one has to dive deep into the Google Activity Logs.
Only way to protect yourself is, of course, to disable GPS on the phone - but what if you want to use Maps or another navigation at the same time?
EDIT - for example I'm not sure the original "Bounty hunters" use case would be facilitated by Google's targeted ads. There's a big gap between "I might be able to target ads at people in a narrow geographical area" and "I can find our where someone lives"
In order to target adds "at people in a narrow geographical area" I need to know when those people are in that "narrow geographical area". I.e., I need to know their location to an accuracy good enough to say they are in that "narrow geographical area" (or in this case, their phones location, which is a good proxy for their location).
Once I can know "the phones location" to a level of accuracy to make "narrow geographical area" targeted ads profitable, all I have to do is average several overnight readings of 'location' together to get a very good estimate of "where someone lives".
Maybe you want multiple companies competing in the same realm rather than Google handling most of the private data and becoming incredibly powerful. Maybe you want to unmask Google's motives so as to not play into their PR strategy.
Consumers don't expect to be GPS tracked everywhere and have companies profit on that data. Granting location permission to us here means that because we know, but most people would consider giving weather.com access to your location just helpful to get your forecast. Even if it is nestled in the privacy policy. What is next? You download a camera app and then every photo is sent to someone who turns AI on it to learn about you? (could already be happening) Oh but it was in the privacy policy that we may share data with third parties.
So we could come up with a hundred explanations for why Google took this action in this thread, some cynical, some conspiratorial, some altruistic and idealistic. And frankly, half of them would probably be sort-of correct, in that one or more of the decision-makers and their advisers might have considered that point or used it as a basis of their decision.
Occasionally you can state cleanly, "Company X did Y because Z", but it's usually more complicated than that. And when it is a case of "Company X did Y because A, B and C and despite I, J, K", you rarely have the information to reason out all of the variables that went into a decision, unless the matter is of such historical importance that you get the 27 books written after the fact based on years of investigation and interviews.
In Canada our two major wireless providers (oligarch) own most of the content providers as well.
These giants are most definitely involved in advertising at some level.
In India Google operates one of the largest Fiber Backed project called Railwire. It's a GOI enterprise, but we can say that officals are effectively bribed to participate in data harvesting schemes and enriching a few officials and one big American company.
Google offers this company internet technology expertise in return of harvesting data from railway stations, Users of the ISP called Railwire.
Basically, they set your DNS to Google's DNS and Google captures what websites are popular in these specific regions.
You can change your DNS obviously but 90% users don't bother and it doesn't save you from deep packet inspection.
Google also harvests non Https websites and run deep packet inspection of the traffic.
Why would it provide its tech expertise for free?
Google makes it pretty clear that they do not sell any personal information to advertisers: https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/
Unpopular opinion: I feel like this is further evidence of Google being good stewards of user data.
There are many reasons Google may want to protect this data: They don't want user backlash from revelations like this, they don't want to have to be legislated, they don't want the PR spend of having to recover from such reporting. Or it could be that it is a company built of people who find such protection to be important.
They have more information about you that they choose not to sell than you can even imagine. They literally set the high-bar for PII and other types of tracking data.
The only ones who know nearly as much are Telcos and they have been openly selling and sharing all of your info to governments and shady shell corporations since day 1.
Edit - Forgot that Facebook is catching up to Google on data and they have been a leaky cup since day one as well.
But the fact that Google (or any centralized entity) has aggregated so much detailed information on billions of people's personal lives is itself a threat to global/national security.
What happens when that data is hacked/leaked and then sold to the highest bidder (who isn't interested in advertising)? That data could be easily weaponized for a shocking/devastating attack the likes of which we have not seen since the first atomic bomb.
When it comes to siphoning location data from Android devices, it looks like Google only cares about updating its help pages, and not really about addressing the actual points in such a backlash. There is no evidence on this topic that Google cares about a backlash or PR spend or anything else. All its actions show that Google wants more and more data, and that it wants to be the one that gets all the data.
The other one AFAIK doesn't sell user data, has publicly denied to help the FBI (Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied), and has put in a large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down).
Obviously this doesn't mean apple doesn't do bad things behind the scenes, but based on the information available to us is why people trust them more with privacy then google.
Google literally lead the charge on this with their transparency report for government data requests and won huge victories in allowing for the reporting of things like FISA requests.
It's great that Apple has followed Google's lead and also publishes a transparency report, but their own report also clearly shows that they DO comply with government requests: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
And both Google & Apple have comparable percentages of requests honored per their own reports.
Regardless an "assume complied" is an illogical position to take here. Assume a company did work that they didn't have to for one-off requests? That's a safe thing to assume they didn't do. Assume they did nothing, because that's way easier, cheaper, and simpler for them. Which means assume they didn't help anyone, including the FBI.
> large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down).
No. iOS / OSX are locked down to prevent competition. There's no privacy benefit in keeping the user from poking at their own device.
Apple did a lot of work specifically to enable apps to do things like track a user's location in the background. Things that didn't used to be possible, but which Apple put in work to do. The only significant thing they did here on iOS was make it a runtime permission, which other platforms have similarly done. OSX continues to have no real restrictions or enforcement for apps, except to try and prevent you from installing them outside of the app store.
They put more effort into bragging about their privacy than they did in actually improving privacy. Advertising turns out to be extremely effective, as Apple frequently proves.
Apple is saying "we do not want to write code to compromise device security", which is different than "not helping the FBI". They are obliged to and do provide access to things like iOS backups, etc.
These companies are neither good nor evil. End of the day, if you care about privacy, cleartext cannot be in the custody of a third party.
> Apple specifically avoids these types of products.
No, Apple specifically partners with the companies selling this stuff and don't care at all. They could easily issue a statement saying they disagree with those they shake hands and share money with, but they won't. Google will though.
Companies are companies, they don't "care" about privacy, or anything at all. Google, Apple, Facebook, they're all in this for the money. And that is fine.
The sooner we realize that, the better.
You enjoy using iMessages on your android phone and Linux laptop do you?
Yeah, yeah, it’s different. Except that it’s the same in the areas in which each competes. There’s plenty of examples of Apple freezing out others from a market.
I have had times where it took 45 minutes to reach Fi support which was very frustrating. And looking on the Google Fi subreddit you're not the only one with the shipping issues. That being said, I've only had outstanding interactions with their support department. I had reoccurring problems with my Nexus 6P and they RMAd it several times, overnight.
I've found their coverage and WiFi calling to be better here in Mountain View than Verizon. It is hard to beat their experience when travelling internationally, you pay the same as you would domestically, and you have access to the high speed networks. The Fi app is beautiful, and doesn't try to sell you anything. I recently checked out the Verizon app and its 90% ads and 10% useful.
It's great for domestic and international travel and I don't have to worry (as much) about my number getting ported, so big security win.
Their service and support have been wonderful, including replacing a device twice (with overnight shipping) free of charge, outside of warranty.
I haven't had a desire to cancel my service, so I can't help you with the cancel button being missing. :)
Is that so "evil" that it somehow outweighs the hundreds of open-source projects they've released? Or the extremely useful free-services they provide like Maps and Search? The thousands of jobs they've created in our industry? The new protocols they've released for free to the IETF? The security bugs they've helped uncover?
Google does an immense amount of good for society. I don't understand how people can so easily lose sight of that.
Note that I was born in India and have different views than American citizens due to having first hand experience with what information can do to transform lives.
Compare to Apple, which actually handed over the iCloud keys of all its Chinese customers to the Chinese government.
We should continue to pressure Google to make fewer mistakes like these, but let's not pretend they're in the same league as truly bad actors like Apple and Facebook when it comes to privacy.
Deleted Comment
Hey, stop doing that, please?