yes. I spent five years working on one of Google’s privacy teams. I have no direct knowledge of this, since I left years ago, so I am free to speculate. I agree with this post’s conclusion as to the likely reasoning for the change. the public should be upset.
I generally don’t even let my browser have access to my location.
I use Google maps that way, and as far as I can tell, the only bad part about it is, when I’m looking for directions, I have to type in my starting address instead of letting it use my current location.
That doesn’t seem to dent the usefulness of the site any for me.
Saying this just gave me a project idea: I’d like a menubar/tray applet that does nothing but find the nearest street address to my computer’s current location. Clicking it could instruct it to find the location and put it on the clipboard so I could paste it into whatever site I want to use without granting my browser access to my location info.
Hence never ever signing in to anything except IMAP, except in a private/incognito window when I absolutely have to, definitely never ever in a G-phone-app, and in fact only ever using incognito private windows for anything, ever.
Gaaah. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ll be easy to fingerprint as being the same as the default settings of anyone with the same computers, right? But I take the point. Still, it “feels” better this way, from an experience-of-the-internet kind of perspective.
well, for the record, at least it won’t be enough information to distinguish you from me, since I also do that
(that’s intended as a humorous attempt at solidarity. the reality of course is that, with Google’s resources, it’s easy to fingerprint regardless. still, at least sites with fewer resources at their disposal will have some trouble)
I noticed this a while ago with my μBlock Origin rules and how I’d have to give exception rules to all of Google on things like JavaScript. I fire up Brave in Incognito just to do Google Map tasks before returning to LibreWolf.
My conspiracy foil hat says this is a part of getting users off of Ad Blockers putting maintainers in the spot of making exceptions so nontechnical users don’t think the net is broken and not ticking off the privacy-minding folks by letting it through.
(But OSM has been a great project to contribute data too)
GOOG really caught my eye when, as a default-deny uMatrix user I noticed they have come to dominate the captcha world. I have had to allow list *.google.com on so many sites just to successfully authenticate, it is disheartening.
I have a degoogled phone with only open source apps. This means I have to use the Google Maps website. (for the few times I use google maps instead of OsmAnd) The geolocation permission in Firefox Mobile allows me to find route from where I am right now to where I want to go.
Organic Maps is great. Although I often have to do the geocoding part externally because I don’t get the coordinates searching the OpenStreetMap data. Fortunately sharing or pasting most URLs with a lat,lon pair just works. And once you have the location saved in app, the routing is better or as bad (but in a different way) than Google(1).
Yes, I would love to go across 4 lanes of traffic at rush hour from a stop sign. Thanks so much.
I haven’t felt the need to use the web site for ages, openstreetmap.org has much better data most places I’ve been. In a previous thread where I mentioned OsmAnd, I was directed to try Organic Maps. It does seem like a nicer (and more properly open source) front end for mobile. I’ll properly swich once I’ve managed to import my favourites from OsmAnd (OsmAnd’s export formats and Organic Maps’ import formats do not overlap, so you need to export and then run a conversion tool).
yes. I spent five years working on one of Google’s privacy teams. I have no direct knowledge of this, since I left years ago, so I am free to speculate. I agree with this post’s conclusion as to the likely reasoning for the change. the public should be upset.
had the same thoughts and arrived to the same conclusion. Using firefox containers might help partitioning those websites.
I thought this redirect had been in place for a few years now. Looking around the web it might even be as early as 2018.
I hadn’t considered the implications of it though, it’s pretty sneaky.
I generally don’t even let my browser have access to my location.
I use Google maps that way, and as far as I can tell, the only bad part about it is, when I’m looking for directions, I have to type in my starting address instead of letting it use my current location.
That doesn’t seem to dent the usefulness of the site any for me.
Saying this just gave me a project idea: I’d like a menubar/tray applet that does nothing but find the nearest street address to my computer’s current location. Clicking it could instruct it to find the location and put it on the clipboard so I could paste it into whatever site I want to use without granting my browser access to my location info.
Hence never ever signing in to anything except IMAP, except in a private/incognito window when I absolutely have to, definitely never ever in a G-phone-app, and in fact only ever using incognito private windows for anything, ever.
If you always use incognito mode, you might be easier to fingerprint because most people don’t do that and now you stand out.
Gaaah. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ll be easy to fingerprint as being the same as the default settings of anyone with the same computers, right? But I take the point. Still, it “feels” better this way, from an experience-of-the-internet kind of perspective.
haha
Let’s say it would be better for everyone if everyone would do that. Which I think firefox is helping doing by being more restrictive??
well, for the record, at least it won’t be enough information to distinguish you from me, since I also do that
(that’s intended as a humorous attempt at solidarity. the reality of course is that, with Google’s resources, it’s easy to fingerprint regardless. still, at least sites with fewer resources at their disposal will have some trouble)
2 is a good start ;-)
I noticed this a while ago with my μBlock Origin rules and how I’d have to give exception rules to all of Google on things like JavaScript. I fire up Brave in Incognito just to do Google Map tasks before returning to LibreWolf.
My conspiracy foil hat says this is a part of getting users off of Ad Blockers putting maintainers in the spot of making exceptions so nontechnical users don’t think the net is broken and not ticking off the privacy-minding folks by letting it through.
(But OSM has been a great project to contribute data too)
GOOG really caught my eye when, as a default-deny uMatrix user I noticed they have come to dominate the captcha world. I have had to allow list *.google.com on so many sites just to successfully authenticate, it is disheartening.
Google being trash as usual.
What do location permissions do on Google Maps? I tried looking it up but only found answers regarding the mobile app, not the website.
I would guess that it gives the website the permission to use the Geolocation API.
I have a degoogled phone with only open source apps. This means I have to use the Google Maps website. (for the few times I use google maps instead of OsmAnd) The geolocation permission in Firefox Mobile allows me to find route from where I am right now to where I want to go.
For an alternative to the beast that is OsmAnd, you might want to loop into Organic Maps.
Organic Maps is great. Although I often have to do the geocoding part externally because I don’t get the coordinates searching the OpenStreetMap data. Fortunately sharing or pasting most URLs with a lat,lon pair just works. And once you have the location saved in app, the routing is better or as bad (but in a different way) than Google(1).
I haven’t felt the need to use the web site for ages, openstreetmap.org has much better data most places I’ve been. In a previous thread where I mentioned OsmAnd, I was directed to try Organic Maps. It does seem like a nicer (and more properly open source) front end for mobile. I’ll properly swich once I’ve managed to import my favourites from OsmAnd (OsmAnd’s export formats and Organic Maps’ import formats do not overlap, so you need to export and then run a conversion tool).
OSM is definitely the way to go for off road stuff, google still has better results when searching for a place to eat or shop