Honestly this has been my main issue with the tech privacy issue for years.
I love smart gadgets. I really wanted to go all in and automate my life, and the whole 'personal data' thing seemed like a really fair trade off for what was promised.
Only, they took all the data and never really delivered the convenience.
I spent about 10 years trying to figure out why WearOS needed to collect all my data, all the time, even when I wasn't wearing a watch, and yet when it crashed every few weeks, there was no way to restore anything from a backup. Had to start again from scratch every time (or ADB). What's the point in collecting all that data when I couldn't usefully access any of it?
Same thing with Google home, more or less. I wasn't a big fan of the terms and conditions, but hey, it's super convenient just being able to announce 'ok Google I need to get out of bed soon' and have it turn on the lights, play music etc.
Only, some mornings it wouldn't do that. Wouldn't even remember that I'd set an alarm. And alarms kinda need to be reliable: if they work 19 times out of 20, that's not actually good enough to rely on. Dumb alarm clocks, or phones, you can be pretty sure the alarm will go off
So, not much point using Google for morning routines and alarms. So, not much point giving it full access to everything I say any time.
I would give it all my data if it could reliably remember to play preset alarms, or give a basic backup and restore option. Hell, I'd probably give Google access to all my photos if the UI wasn't so ugly.
I still don't really understand big techs reasoning here.
If data is the new gold and everyone was dying for more ways to track odds us all and harvest our data - why not just build a decent product?
If phone batteries lasted for days, people would spend more time on their phones, isn't that what the tech companies want?
If competent people worked on making Gmail efficient, light, user friendly, and not crawling with bugs more people would use it, and more data.
It's like the oligarchs trying to take over the world will do literally anything, anything to win, other than paying people to develop decent, reliable products
I love smart gadgets. I really wanted to go all in and automate my life, and the whole 'personal data' thing seemed like a really fair trade off for what was promised.
Only, they took all the data and never really delivered the convenience.
I spent about 10 years trying to figure out why WearOS needed to collect all my data, all the time, even when I wasn't wearing a watch, and yet when it crashed every few weeks, there was no way to restore anything from a backup. Had to start again from scratch every time (or ADB). What's the point in collecting all that data when I couldn't usefully access any of it?
Same thing with Google home, more or less. I wasn't a big fan of the terms and conditions, but hey, it's super convenient just being able to announce 'ok Google I need to get out of bed soon' and have it turn on the lights, play music etc.
Only, some mornings it wouldn't do that. Wouldn't even remember that I'd set an alarm. And alarms kinda need to be reliable: if they work 19 times out of 20, that's not actually good enough to rely on. Dumb alarm clocks, or phones, you can be pretty sure the alarm will go off So, not much point using Google for morning routines and alarms. So, not much point giving it full access to everything I say any time.
I would give it all my data if it could reliably remember to play preset alarms, or give a basic backup and restore option. Hell, I'd probably give Google access to all my photos if the UI wasn't so ugly.
I still don't really understand big techs reasoning here. If data is the new gold and everyone was dying for more ways to track odds us all and harvest our data - why not just build a decent product? If phone batteries lasted for days, people would spend more time on their phones, isn't that what the tech companies want? If competent people worked on making Gmail efficient, light, user friendly, and not crawling with bugs more people would use it, and more data.
It's like the oligarchs trying to take over the world will do literally anything, anything to win, other than paying people to develop decent, reliable products