For many, Google is synonymous with seemingly healthy features suddenly deleted from existence. There’s some truth to it, but one of the crucial changes I’ve taken issue with isn’t in the absence of features; it’s in the convolution. Specifically, in the privacy changes made to Google Maps Timelines.
Privacy takes precedence in Google Maps
As long as I can remember, it seems like Google Maps has had its universally loved timeline feature.
Wherever you go and whatever you visit, Google Maps saves your route and location data for a couple of reasons. It’s how Google pulls some recommendations based on past visits, but on the user-facing side, it also means a record of your trips is saved with easy recall.
The feature had to be enabled, and consent had to be given to Google to store that data in its servers. Still, most, including myself, were all too happy to allow that for the sake of looking back several years and saying, “Oh yeah, I remember grabbing ramen at 2 am in Yokohama.”
You could take a look at entire countries and see your own hotspots — where you frequented the most and where you haven’t been at all.
In 2019, the New York Times published an article that highlighted the problem with this system. Google was being targeted by law enforcement, and warrants were being obtained to collect geofencing data from the company. Why wouldn’t a warrant need to be obtained for the suspect? Well, the suspect didn’t own that data; Google did.
It was kept on Sensorvault servers, housing location data with “anonymous ID numbers” tagging each device contributing to Google’s servers. Those IDs were then requested via another warrant after the number was linked to the crime in question. The result was usernames and other valuable personal information turned over to law enforcement, and not always for the correct suspect.
You can see how this would be problematic.
At the end of last year, Google made an adjustment to Maps that took the responsibility of storage away from the company and put it on device owners. The Timeline feature in Google Maps switched over to an on-device system, where each device that contributes to location history would keep local data about its comings and goings.
The option to back that data up to the cloud is still there, but it needs to be enabled for each device that contributes. If not, that timeline data is lost if the device is reset or if that data auto-deletes after a short period of time — something that can be disabled.
Privacy is great, but execution costs are high
In the life of someone who covers Android devices, switching phones is second nature. Somewhere in the shuffle, I seemed to have missed the cutoff for Google’s switch to on-device timelines.
If I had paid more attention, I might have been able to back everything up. But I didn’t.
Road trips — gone. Cross-country moves — gone. First time visiting another country — gone. Every event, CES, or IFA visit — gone.
I thought that maybe I could go through all the devices I used since Google made the switch, and maybe just one of them would have access to the backed-up timeline data. That was a waste of time. The data is gone.
Just this past week, before realizing my mistake, I foolishly got excited to look through the Timeline feature.
I was looking for last year’s IFA trip in Berlin to show someone where I had taken a massive bike detour one night. This was all in the hopes of retracing steps and finding the exact location of some horrifying statue with a deer skull attached to it.
That’s when I fully realized my trip data was lost. There was no hope of finding that haunting amalgamation of man and antlers becuase the exact route I rode was missing. That whole trip was missing.
I imagine that if Google had removed Timelines altogether, without the option to back things up within a certain amount of time, the data loss would feel less frustrating. The opportunity was there and, still, due to some admitted incompetence, my timeline data was purged from existence. That feels so much worse than the abandonment of any feature could.
That includes classic products that have gone unsupported, like Stadia and Google Podcasts, to name just two. Games that were once on Stadia still exist. Just becuase the platform is gone doesn’t mean I can’t play them somewhere else. I’m sure my location data is out there, realistically, but it’s not within reasonable reach.
So is it better to lose a feature in its entirety, or miss the boat when massive changes come along? It happens all the time. Google’s product ecosystem is so vast that it’s difficult to keep up with every little tool at your disposal. That’s even more true in the wake of Gemini and the onslaught of AI tools that spawn from it. If even a couple of those brought on changes as inherently substantial as the Timelines tool, plenty of users may never even know about it.
That extends to users in my own family. They had been using Maps consistently for directions since Google announced it would be changing its approach, and they had no idea that Maps Timelines needed to be backed up. Like me, their last decade of travel data is gone.
In essence, the Google Maps Timeline contributions feel like the culmination of literal years of travel and existence. It’s a palpable representation of where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Losing that is gutting, in a way.
If this is your first time hearing about the change, go ahead and open Google Maps. You won’t be notified that your timeline is gone. Only when you open the feature page after tapping your profile photo will you get a notification about your data.
If Google hadn’t hidden the card highlighting the change in the actual Timeline page — a page rarely frequented — then more users would likely back up their data and save their trip log. Supplemented with push notifications and emails detailing the change, it’s likely the change went unnoticed for some.
Even if that feature isn’t directly interacted with very often, the ability to recall past trips and visits is extremely valuable. For myself, that value was reset to 0.
The feature isn’t technically gone, but it feels like starting over. That’s worse than losing it altogether.
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