Google also accidentally deleted a random amount of user’s timeline data if you didn’t immediately catch it and restore from back up last March before the affected backups were overwritten. If you didn’t keep a close enough watch on your timeline to know that that happened, everything before ~Feb 2025 is gone now.
Ask me how I know. Yes I kept up on permissions. Yes I had backups on. No I didn’t have a new device. I even have dozens of available gigabytes of paid storage on Google One.
I’m sure it will only get more stable due to maps and timeline being revenue generators that encourage investment.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 day ago
There’s a good chunk of us who used it with the web, and they’re adding that to the vast Google graveyard. That in and of itself makes me excited to see an alternative because Google will kill the app version on a whim too.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The device only was for privacy. When the data was stored in the cloud, the government had unrestricted access. By making it device only they need to get your device to get that data.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Lol. The only thing this setting does is hide the information from the user. Google, or a thousand other data brokers (many probably created by Google for this purpose) still retain that data indefinitely.
Moonrise2473@feddit.it 20 hours ago
Privacy? I’m sure that Google tried so hard to monetize it and after so many years they didn’t found a way, couldn’t use it for ai training too, so they decided to turn it off and save millions in database costs.
They still exfiltrate user movements for improving Google maps, it’s just that they don’t need to keep them indefinitely or for years or maintain a nice interface for that
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I’m sure Google does monetize the gps data instantly, then throws it away rather than save old data that only costs money to respond to government requests.
This is a case where privacy is economically beneficial to Google.
3abas@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
Yes, that’s correct, Google didn’t do it out of the goodness of their non-existent heart, they made what they think is the best financial decision.
It’s a good one for the consumer though, whether see that or not. It’s good that your every move ever taken is stored in a company’s database.
Don’t worry, they most certainly used it to train a decent model of any typical American demographics movements before scrubbing it.
lka1988@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It never went away. It’s still a feature. It’s just stored locally on your device. Thats it.