'Google Keep' Note Taking App Now Available on Apple Watch

[spacemnspiff]

Yeah, I can see how Google's bots crawling your notes for keywords so they can target you with ads (that you're already seeing anyway) is somehow the end of the world.

Google is glad that it has users like you, who undervalue their data to enrich Google and it's massive ad driven profits, advertising industry spends far more on the data compared to the cost of services that Google provides, advertising industry values our data far more than you value it.

Ad revenue - cost to keep users engaged (Search, Gmail, Maps) = profits at the expense of users undervaluing their privacy. There is a reason why Google doens't have paid subscription model, because their real customer is the ad industry.

Yay for Google and the Ad industry that feeds off of confirmatory bias (feel good) of users like you.

 

[Hedwigg]

Google is glad that it has users like you, who undervalue their data to enrich Google and it's massive ad driven profits, advertising industry spends far more on the data compared to the cost of services that Google provides, advertising industry values our data far more than you value it.

Ad revenue - cost to keep users engaged (Search, Gmail, Maps) = profits at the expense of users undervaluing their privacy. There is a reason why Google doens't have paid subscription model, because their real customer is the ad industry.

Yay for Google and the Ad industry that feeds off of confirmatory bias (feel good) of users like you.

All of what you said is true. Google found a way to profit off selling ads. That doesn’t mean they’re selling our privacy. That’s where the disconnect is. People who cry that they won’t use a notes app because “Google is evil” don’t understand how Google and ads work.

 

[spacemnspiff]

All of what you said is true. Google found a way to profit off selling ads. That doesn’t mean they’re selling our privacy. That’s where the disconnect is. People who cry that they won’t use a notes app because “Google is evil” don’t understand how Google and ads work.

Thanks for having a civil discourse about this.

I agree that layperson doesn't understand how the Google ad system works, but my dislike is for the advertising based data collection model with implied consent of the user.

If Google were transparent about it's practices and actually paid users for their data with their explicit consent, apart from providing services, then that would be different model. It takes GDPR like heavy handed approach to reign in control of Google and FB.

 

[rockarollr]

I signed in just to say, “No thanks. I don’t trust ANYTHING Google.”

This app won’t be seen anywhere near my Apple Watch. That’s for certain.

 

[Hedwigg]

Thanks for having a civil discourse about this.

I agree that layperson doesn't understand how the Google ad system works, but my dislike is for the advertising based data collection model with implied consent of the user.

If Google were transparent about it's practices and actually paid users for their data with their explicit consent, apart from providing services, then that would be different model. It takes GDPR like heavy handed approach to reign in control of Google and FB.

Oh I totally agree... it'd be wonderful if we all got paid for our part in Google profiting off us all, but I'm sure that we all agree to take part in their "food chain", as it were, for free when we all click "I Agree" on their terms of service when signing up for gmail accounts. (I say that as someone who never reads the TOS agreements... heh). I dunno... ads in general are awful, and I hate that we as a society have agreed to allow them to take over our online experience (I could throw my computer out the window every time I have to watch a YouTube video with more than one ad per video), but it's also just how things have worked out in way of the internet being free. Gotta take the good with the bad, I suppose :/

 

[MisterSavage]

Should be pretty handy, especially when grocery shopping.

What's weird is that I see all of my "pinned" notes but only one of the "other" notes on my watch.

 

[Maxerl]

That's great Google! I'm been using the iphone app regularly (for shared grocery list with girlfriend) but in the store it's a bit awkward to always pick the phone out from or into the pocket. (No, not the most awkward thing in life, but still an improvement).

 

[kuwxman]

The amount of ignorant posts in this thread is ridiculous.

For those that actually use technology, Keep is a great note app. The stock Notes app from Apple has certainly improved over the years, but just like with Maps, Google is still winning in terms of functionality and usefulness.

 

[haganah]

Pretty funny how many armchair digital security experts come out of the woodwork on articles like these. There's a distant gap between the perception (Google has employees straight up taking all the passwords/notes you put into their notes app for... idk personal use I guess?) vs. reality (machine learning algorithms scrub platforms like Gmail where you have agreed to a Terms of Service stating that they may pull specific keywords to put you on lists to be given specific targeted advertisements).

Pretty funny how many armchair ML experts come out of the woodwork on articles like these.

Because here's what happens. Models are trained. You can use training that completely excludes explicit PII or go further and remove implicit information that someone could come to a guess on what the user's bank info was, who their mother is, what sickness they have etc. or you can include PII in some sort of funky way. You can send that information to graders and annotators. You can send it to modelers. And you do it in continuous cycles and refreshes. Machines don't just work behind the scenes. And beyond the humans seeing it, you also now have to worry about the fact that a company knows very explicit details about you within its tech stack.

And, of course, the TOS which are not even really human readable and almost always ignored all the fall back - "why yes we put that one line in the middle of 20 pages of legalese about how we can do what we want when you click submit".

 

[spacemnspiff]

Oh I totally agree... it'd be wonderful if we all got paid for our part in Google profiting off us all, but I'm sure that we all agree to take part in their "food chain", as it were, for free when we all click "I Agree" on their terms of service when signing up for gmail accounts. (I say that as someone who never reads the TOS agreements... heh). I dunno... ads in general are awful, and I hate that we as a society have agreed to allow them to take over our online experience (I could throw my computer out the window every time I have to watch a YouTube video with more than one ad per video), but it's also just how things have worked out in way of the internet being free. Gotta take the good with the bad, I suppose :/

The backlash that we see in threads like these is because people are becoming slowly aware of the nefarious ways in which the ad industry including Google collects data and then tries to surgically target advertisements. Advertisements have become the bane of online existence. Every site has a Google and/or FB script that is collecting data, that is Orwellian of sorts.

Should be pretty handy, especially when grocery shopping.

What's weird is that I see all of my "pinned" notes but only one of the "other" notes on my watch.

My wife and I use the Apple Reminders watch app for grocery shopping and also for general lists of things to do, it has worked well for us.

 

[Newton1600]

They don’t?

No they don't. Not third party apps. Would love to be able to scribble on a task manager like things 3