Google dresses up services for the EU's Digital Markets Act

On Tuesday, Google elaborated on its efforts to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) – a set of competition obligations that take effect on Thursday. The DMA is a law that aims to increase competition by designating dominant tech firms as "gatekeepers" and requiring them to accommodate competitors. In …

[Necrohamster]

Google, why are you like this?

On Tuesday, Google elaborated on its efforts to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) – a set of competition obligations that take effect on Thursday.

...

Those using Google services in Europe – Search, YouTube, Ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping, and Google Maps – will also be able to choose whether or not to keep those services linked so that they share data.

I wondered why Google was spamming my Android phone yesterday about the Google services I'd previously gone to the trouble of unlinking.

Looks like they're making a last-ditch effort to get users to reconsider...

[Dinanziame]

Re: Google, why are you like this?

I think you can count yourself very lucky if they only ask you to reconsider this one time, on the day the change happens. They definitely want users to think of Google as one big blob that provides dozens of services rather than a collection of unrelated services which can easily be replaced by a third party. They don't even feel bad about this — from their point of view, it makes their services better. They think they can provide better results on YouTube if they know what you searched for on Google, and so on.

Not that people will feel reassured by these new rules. A large number of people think that their phone is constantly listening to them just to choose which ads to show them, permissions be damned, with no more evidence than "I talked about cars and then it showed me ads for cars". The fact that DMA makes this explicitly illegal won't convince them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Google, why are you like this?

Given that some relatives started getting ads for a very specific product after having a conversation about it (didn't get ads for it before), it really wouldn't surprise me if the devices are listening even when not told to. Didn't Amazon file for a patent on identifying background noises in recordings? The point being to advertise toilet paper based on number of flushes, or facial tissue based on sneezes, etc.

There's a REASON I won't have an Echo in my house, and my phone has Google Assistant disabled.

[MiguelC]

Re: Google, why are you like this?

I have Google assistant disabled, but this happened to me nonetheless....

[Chet Mannly]

Re: Google, why are you like this?

Yeah you need to break out ADB and uninstall it completely rather than just disable. I used to find that merely 'disabled' apps were strangely still running in the background even though I had restarted and they should have been dead.