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  • Showing only topics in ~tech with the tag "google". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Update to Google Workspace TOS regarding public posts

      Section 9 of Google Workspace's Terms of Service has been updated. Here's how it was summarized in the notification: Section 9, Publicity: We clarified that neither Google nor you may issue a...

      Section 9 of Google Workspace's Terms of Service has been updated. Here's how it was summarized in the notification:

      Section 9, Publicity: We clarified that neither Google nor you may issue a press release or other similar public statement regarding your use of the services without the other party’s permission

      The section itself makes clear that:

      Neither party may use the other party’s Brand Features or issue, publish, or present a press release, blog post, speech, social media post, or investor relations call or announcement discussing Customer’s use of the Services or this Agreement without the prior written consent of the other party

      Have you seen similar terms before? It seems very strange to me that they would contractually disallow customers from sharing how they use Google services or from discussing the TOS.

      8 votes
    2. How's the iPhone experience on Google Fi in late 2024?

      I've been a long time Fi user on the Pixel line of phones, so I've always gotten the gold standard of service from Fi. My wife is an adamant iPhone user. We want to port her over to my plan, but I...

      I've been a long time Fi user on the Pixel line of phones, so I've always gotten the gold standard of service from Fi. My wife is an adamant iPhone user. We want to port her over to my plan, but I was hoping to get some recent feedback from anyone using a modern iPhone (just bought her a 16) -- All the things I find on Google are months to years old. If this is you, how well do the iPhone features (Visual voicemail, iMessage, RCS, FaceTime, 5G, etc) work for you on Fi?

      8 votes
    3. Been considering cutting down on YouTube

      I find myself scrolling through YT hoping to see something to play in the background, occasionally checking things like TechLinked or MichaelMJD with occasional PointCrow and Dougdoug. But really...

      I find myself scrolling through YT hoping to see something to play in the background, occasionally checking things like TechLinked or MichaelMJD with occasional PointCrow and Dougdoug. But really just wasting time doing nothing, just scrolling.
      So I want to cut it off but I want to fill in that time with something else.
      Anyone else has tried to cut off YT(Or at least minimize) YT from their life? I’m probably using YT the wrong way.
      I would like some RSS feeds or podcast to make me go on YT less. Or thoughts/opinions/experiences from other people that used to have YT on almost all the time but minimized the time on YT.

      31 votes
    4. DuckDuckGo seems like a significantly worse search engine than Google despite SEO bloat, and I think community discussions mislead people by omitting that

      In the recent months I started getting dissatisfied with Google the company in general, but also with its search engine due to privacy reasons, and SEO bloat affecting certain searches. A few...

      In the recent months I started getting dissatisfied with Google the company in general, but also with its search engine due to privacy reasons, and SEO bloat affecting certain searches. A few weeks ago I switched to Duckduckgo from Google. Some searches are fine but there are three main issues I've been experiencing with Duckduckgo since the switch.

      • The search "fails" and shows me results that are tangentially related to the query. Happens quite often and for various topics.
      • It shows me a semi-related search results instead of the one I searched for, because it says there are not enough results for my query. Then I have to click again on the small text to search for the actual query.
      • The automatic prompts that complete your query are scarce and unsatisfactory.

      Because of this I've been switching back and forth between Google and Duckduckgo lately. I don't want to use Google, but Duckduckgo is definitely the worse option in general in my experience. It's better in some searches and shows useful results instead of big site bloat, but my overall experience was one of getting heavily downgraded.

      This led me to a criticism about the discussions around this topic. People talk a lot about SEO bloat affecting search results, and it's definitely a real issue. It's especially a problem for some political searches, as it results in you getting propaganda results. However, recommending people Duckduckgo without mentioning its significantly worse search quality seems misleading.

      I am of course not against using or recommending Duckduckgo. In fact, I wish them greater success in market share and development, as I think their policies are much better. But I think mentioning Duckduckgo's downsides is important to adequately inform people. I expected a noticeable downgrade, but I didn't expect it to be this worse because nobody mentioned it. As a result, I felt misled, and I definitely didn't know what I was getting into. Being adequately informed would have prevented that, as I would adjust my expectations.

      So, this seems to be largely unaddressed in discussions around this topic, and I suspect the echo chamber effect around anti-Google discourse and privacy issues might be to blame.

      What are your thoughts? Has anyone experienced something similar?

      65 votes
    5. Question about Google's Find My Device network with the new trackers

      Hi everyone, Have a quick question if you have the time. I want to buy some of the new Android Find My Device trackers, have wanted to ever since destroying my Tiles when they were bought by that...

      Hi everyone,

      Have a quick question if you have the time. I want to buy some of the new Android Find My Device trackers, have wanted to ever since destroying my Tiles when they were bought by that scummy data-retailer.

      My question is: if I buy, for example, a Pebblebee device, does Pebblebee get my location data? Google already has that; that's the deal with the devil you have to decide whether or not you want to take. But I don't want to give this information to another third party.

      I've done some Googling on this but of course search is useless these days. I tried to read Pebblebee's privacy policy but gave up pretty quickly:

      ➜  ~ cat pebblebee | wc -w
      17391
      

      Does anyone have an authoritative answer on this? Would love to know.

      TIA and thanks for your time!

      ETA: I have seen where Pebblebee claims they don't sell user data; I'm not even questioning that with this post (although I do question every company's trustworthiness). This is more a question about the architecture of the Find My Device network itself.

      Edit 2: I'm already carrying around a personal spy that reports everything I do to Google, I don't think it matters whether they can get my location from the trackers lol. I just wondered if I was exposing that to Pebblebee (just as an example) as well.

      13 votes