I hate that google products are such crap if you don't let them remember everything about you. I deactivated the maps tracking on the privacy page recently because the wording made it sounds creepy, like they can keep track of where I am whenever they have it, not just the destinations I ask for navigation to. As a result, they don't suggest any places at all and instead make me type it out until the generic autocomplete gets it. No local storage on my phone, not even speeding up the autocomplete for the single place on google maps I have favorited. They seem to be very much all or nothing :( Either we track you everywhere or nowhere at all and gimp our products.
It's not a technical limitation, either. There's plenty of cases where they could use use information locally on your device without sending it back to the mothership, but instead they deliberately cripple their services if you don't allow access.
One example - have you ever noticed how Google Maps has barely any street names any more? And the streets that are named are random tiny side streets, no matter how far you zoom in or out. It's because it's designed to be used in Directions mode with location services enabled, and only in Directions mode with location services enabled. You don't need street names if you're a dot following a blue line. Just coincidentally, this is the mode where they get full information about your journey.
The maps on the right in this article are a pretty good approximation to what I get on my last and current phones. It only touches briefly on street names and other labels but the dramatic reduction is clearly visible.
I have Location turned off on my phone and have had Location History by Google turned off for ages. Google Maps on my Galaxy S6 looks like the desktop screenshot.
"...They deliberately cripple" is the wrong wording, they designed it so that they extract maximum value out of you. Because you, are not paying them. Their services are maximally efficient... for them, and just efficient enough for you not to ditch them.
Which is pretty much equivalent. From their point of view, it's some optimum of profit-to-usability space. From my point of view, it's a hodgepodge of subpar features, user-hostile addons and stupid engineering decisions (being on-line when you don't need to), that I nevertheless can't abandon, because everyone else is doing an even worse job.
I see where you're coming from, and I agree that they designed it to extract maximum value from their users. But when, in order to do so, they deliberately make their product punish non-data-yielding users, I think that absolutely deserves to be described as "deliberately crippled."
Your initial point and example are completely unrelated. There are many examples where Google services suck without their online servers, Maps is one of the few that can actually work really well in offline mode.
Google Maps has the whole download area features[0]. If you have an area downloaded, you can see the entire area rendered at (any/most?) zoom levels, see street names, and even get directions.
As for information density, it seems to be a choice of the Google Maps team to show less data at various zoom levels. That has little to do with talking to their online services and more about how the maps team wants to present data to their users.
> Maps is one of the few that can actually work really well in offline mode.
Just how long will it take for google to ask you to long it to do all those useful things that it does? Ability to escape googles panopticon is one of the reasons it's important to support OpenStreetMap https://donate.openstreetmap.org/
I think you might need to reinstall Maps or something. Mine displays the names you would expect at every zoom level, with and without location services turned on.
How can they suggest places without sending your location to their servers? I would expect all the "intelligence" (place recommendation etc.) to be implemented server-side.
You prefetch the list of locations in the area of interest (there won't be that many compared to the humongous amounts of space Google apps consume already), you keep your user's "personality matrix" synchronized, and then when user asks, e.g., for a restaurant nearby, you display them from off-line cache, sorted by distance, characteristics and by how well they match user's personality matrix.
It would be that simple, if it was about actually suggesting places. But it isn't. It's about suggesting places that pay for advertising and successfully billing them, while also collecting as much data about the users as possible. It's a common occurrence on mobile (and also increasingly common in hardware and desktop software) - things that don't need to be on-line are put on the Internet nevertheless, to facilitate a specific business model.
Someone once told me that this is how Apple Maps works so that they can maintain a high privacy standard - though I'd be curious if someone else could verify.
Maybe, for starters, by querying the area of the map that is currently displayed, rather than your current location? Which is more in line with what you'd usually want anyway.
On my Window phone, I have an app that can do navigation while offline... many companies, like Google, want everything to be server side because they want to learn more about you.
I would like to take roughly the "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" approach here and suggest that it's not an intentional crippling, but the fact that the product developers likely do not design for a logged out experience in the least.
I run tech for a few websites, and we could design for the "no JS" user, there are likely MINOR changes needed for much better support, but it's simply not something that we consider at all. I imagine it's similar with Google, they're designing for the logged in user, with maybe automated testing on the logged out user.
One thing I (and many non-technical friends) found creepy recently is how Google Maps monitors your phone camera. An update quietly pushed this on-by-default feature for the purpose of prompting you to add images to their product.
Edit: looks like they have pushed out at least two new on-by-default features since I wrote this (not that long ago); 'photo view count opportunities' and 'new and popular places'.
Well, "monitors your phone camera" is a very misleading way to put it. They "monitor" your photo library, in a way that I think most people would expect. If you take a picture with the GPS on, obviously your phone knows where you are, it's not that weird to ask you something based on your location. I don't think most people expect Google Maps to be completely disconnected from the rest of their Google phone.
OK, I could have been more precise in my wording. I meant that it monitor photos that you take with your phone camera not that it constantly monitors what the camera sees. I didn't intend to mislead and I think that's a reasonable interpretation.
I still think that this is unexpected behaviour. It belongs in the camera app, not the maps app. The expectation is that apps are sand-boxed and separate from each other.
I have anecdotal evidence from friends who don't normally care about issues like this. Yet they felt compelled enough to pro-actively share this with comments similar to "NO GOOGLE!", which suggests it's not just me.
I mean from Google's perspective this sorta makes sense. It's a lot safer to turn literally any tracking/storage off than to get people accusing you of violating your user agreement.
That is a good point, especially when you're dealing with people who are concerned with privacy. Sometimes they can be... uhm.. extremely zealous.. about their privacy. They probably feel they need to default to giving them complete autonomy.
The wording is exactly correct. If your devices send your location in any way, they may collect and store that sent location.
It's probably just for their Location History thing. Which I actually really enjoy using, since I can see all of my past days and where I went. It's pretty neat.
This is actually something I use very frequently, and wish had more data/functionality. It's insane to be able to answer the question of "where did I go" for yesterday[1] (we've all had bouts of bad short term memory), two weeks ago[2], or a year ago[3].
I've been using this feature for so long I assume it's opt-in (I don't remember), but I fully recommend it to anyone that has an inkling of a thought that they _might_ want it later, since you can always delete[4] your location history if you decide you don't.
It's also really cool if you go on a lot of trips or take a lot of photos, because it'll map them out in a timeline view of where/when you took them throughout the day[5].
The the people downvoting this thinking they're cute: totalitarianism is no joke, and your apathy infringes on my rights. You flat out do not get to be this lame.
Get rid of your toys before your toys get rid of you.
Yeah, exactly. This Location History thing could provide me with an alibi if someone was trying to sue me for something I didn't do. It enhances my rights instead of lessening them, in my opinion. And it doesn't touch anyone else's rights.
I think, generally, people are of the mindset, "Yes, I give all my data to Google, and I don't mind it because they power awesome services with it in return".
F-Droid has OsmAnd~ for free for you, it's really good and worth recommending. No tracking, offline maps, offline searches, compatible with µG location services, save and browse POIs... plenty of options that GM or Apple won't offer.
It's a good application, but having used it I found that it was often very difficult or even impossible to locate my destination and when navigating it often had some funny ideas about what route to take; Google offered much better routing and searching.
I ended up saving all the locations I wanted to visit before setting out just to make sure that I could get to them easily.
Not parent, but this is one of the reasons I prefer Apple. They have a better track record. Also, they sell hardware, your data is not the primary product.
One of my friends had an interesting remark about the "privacy opt outs". It's that google always tracks you, no matter what checkbox you check or uncheck. Why not use the data they are already collecting about you to improve your daily life then.
Out of habit, I tend to always use a not-logged in state for everything, and if I need a particular service (including Google), I do so in an Incognito window.
However, I don't use a VPN or spoof my User Agent. Google 100% knows who I am without using any fancy tricks. I've wondered -- wouldn't I be better off logging in everywhere, with my Google privacy settings flipped to maximum? While it's certainly possible for them to map my fingerprint back to my account(s) and opt-out preferences, I think that's a bit much to expect for them. I might be shooting myself in the foot by always being logged out!
> the wording made it sounds creepy, like they can keep
> track of where I am whenever they have it, not just the
> destinations I ask for navigation to
This is actually the case, as far as I can tell. Check it out for yourself by going to Google Maps (doesn't matter if it's the web client or the app), open the hamburger menu from the button in the search box, then click "My Timeline". From there enter any date (in the app, first click the calendar icon) and it'll show you where Google knows your phone was at on that date.
They're doing that with their Speech-to-Text software. I know voice recognition is available offline for phones but it isn't available for download and use without connection to the cloud.
I use Xposed/XPrivacy to restrict my phone's Google app from accessing the internet, which forces voice recognition into local/offline mode. In this mode, it cannot do true dictation style text-to-speech, but it does still recognize and respond to voice commands.
