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Google killed Maps Timeline, so I self-hosted a better one [OwnTracks]
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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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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.
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.
categorically false. literally do a little bit of research. it is stored on-device entirely now, and Google has no access to it.
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
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.
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.