It’s no secret that Googleas well as other large technology companies, I know a lot about you. Probably a lot more than you think I do. And while it’s generally really creepy, it can sometimes produce interesting short results before you get back to being creepy. Case in point: you can start the year by tracking yourself with Google Maps.
As seen by 9to5Google, Google Maps is currently launching ‘Update Timeline 2020’, an email that gives you a breakdown of where you’ve been based on your location history. While this review is available monthly, press releases, 2020 update it will show how your travel habits have shown for the past year.
Yes, 2020 was the year of the coronavirus pandemic, which severely affected travel and movement in general, and Google recognizes it just as much.
“COVID-19 changed the world’s travels in 2020 and how many places people could visit,” reads the email on 9to5Google. “If you’ve been able to travel this year, you can see some of the places you’ve been to with this automatic timeline email.”
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Even though our lifestyle has been hampered by the pandemic, it can still be interesting to see where we have managed to go. According to 9to5Google, the update includes a map of the cities and places you’ve traveled to, as well as a new section called ‘trends’. This section shows you what types of places you’ve been to, such as where you go shopping or eating. Google Maps History also lets you know how many miles you’ve traveled and driven.
To use this feature, you apparently need to have Location History turned on in your Google Account settings. (No, that’s why I searched stupidly for this recap for a while and I didn’t get any results). However, if you have other settings enabled, such as web and application activity, Google can still save your location data when you use its sites, applications, and services, even if you have interrupted your location history or deleted location data according to company support page for feature.
On the feature support page, Google says you can edit your timeline or clear your location history and time slots at any time.
Fortunately, Google says your timeline isn’t available to everyone. It’s private and only you can see it on your mobile and desktop.
All in all, kind of cool, but kind of creepy. It’s up to you to decide how you feel about this feature. Maybe you really like to see your data broken down this way. But if not, you can at any time turn it off.
[9to5Google]