You probably know that Google keeps tabs on what you search for, what videos you watch, and even what locations you look up in Maps. But did you realize the company is also keeping a startlingly detailed log of your real-world movements stretching back years?
It‘s true—and what‘s more, this location record persists even if you deliberately pause the Location History setting. Chances are Google knows more about your whereabouts than you might imagine.
But don‘t take it from me. I dug into everything Google is tracking about me and what I found was eye-opening to say the least. Here‘s a closer look at how pervasive this data collection is, what it means for your privacy, and how you can see and control what Google knows about you.
Google‘s Location Tracking Is Everywhere
First, let‘s put Google‘s reach in perspective. The company‘s products have over 2 billion monthly active users worldwide. Android alone powers over 70% of smartphones globally.
In other words, a huge swath of humanity interacts with Google in some form every single day. And with each of those interactions, the company is gleaning insights about our interests, habits, and crucially, our physical movements.
So how much location data are we talking about? It‘s hard to know for sure, but one app researcher estimated that an Android phone with Chrome active in the background sends location pings to Google‘s servers over 300 times in a 24-hour period. That‘s once every 4.8 minutes.
An estimate of Google location pings from an Android phone over 24 hours. Source: Douglas C. Schmidt, Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University
And those pings add up fast. In 2019, a Google employee revealed that the company is processing over 1 exabyte of user location data per month. For scale, 1 exabyte is equivalent to a billion gigabytes. Every 30 days, Google ingests the equivalent location info of over 11.5 million 4K movies. Let that sink in.
A Closer Look at My Google Location Log
To see how this plays out on an individual level, I took a deep dive into my own Google account at myactivity.google.com. What I found was a disturbingly detailed record of my daily life.
For example, here‘s a snippet of what Google had stored about my movements one random day last fall:
- 7:55am – Commute route from home to office, including estimated travel times
- 1:06pm – Search for lunch spots near my office, including clicks on restaurant listings and menus
- 1:37pm – Walking directions to the lunch restaurant, down to each turn
- 7:20pm – Lyft ride home, including pickup and dropoff addresses
- 8:02pm – Searches for grocery stores and pharmacies near my apartment
- 8:39pm – Walking directions to the grocery store, including time spent inside
That‘s a pretty intimate portrait of my day—all automatically logged because of various interactions with Google Search, Maps, and other services on my phone. The GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular location data all flows back to Google‘s servers.
Extend that over weeks, months and years and you start to get a sense of how rich this dataset becomes. Looking back, I can see:
- Every hotel and Airbnb I‘ve stayed at on trips
- Every restaurant reservation I‘ve made via Google
- The exact routes I took on road trips, hikes, and runs
- How much time I tend to spend at different stores and businesses
- The addresses of friends and family I‘ve gotten directions to
And remember, this log remains whether or not you‘ve enabled the Location History setting. Pausing Location History only stops Google from adding your movements to its Timeline feature, not from collecting the data in the first place.
Why Is Google Collecting All This Location Data?
At this point you may be wondering, why does Google want such granular data about my movements in the first place? The company gives a few key reasons:
-
Personalization: Google uses your location history to tailor the information and recommendations it shows you. If it knows you frequent certain neighborhoods or establishments, it can surface more relevant search results, maps, ads and more.
-
Convenience: Many of Google‘s location-powered features are undeniably handy. Being able to quickly pull up navigation to places you‘ve been before or get automated commute notifications can save time and hassle.
-
Ad targeting: This is the big one. Google‘s bread and butter is serving targeted ads across its many platforms. Location is a key signal that helps advertisers reach the right people at the right times and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. With a log of where you‘ve been, Google can infer a ton about your interests, demographics and purchasing intent.
Of course, all of this ostensibly benefits users too. Google would argue that more relevant ads are less annoying and might even surface products and services you‘re genuinely interested in.
But there‘s no denying the privacy tradeoff. Having such an exhaustive record of your physical movements in the hands of a single company raises obvious security and surveillance risks. Google‘s database is an enticing target for hackers, law enforcement, and anyone else who might want to snoop on your whereabouts.
How to View and Delete Your Google Location History
Feeling creeped out about what might be lurking in your Google location logs? The good news is the company does provide tools to view and manage this data. Here‘s how to see what‘s been collected and delete it if you choose:
- Go to myactivity.google.com and sign into your Google account if prompted.
- In the left sidebar, click "Activity Controls."
- Scroll down to "Web & App Activity" and click "Manage Activity." This will take you to a timeline of your Google activity across various services.
- Use the filters at the top to drill down to specific dates or products. You can also search for keywords like "directions" or "location."
- To delete individual items, click the three dots next to an entry and select "Delete."
- To delete data in bulk, click the trash can icon at the top and select a time range like "Last hour" or "All time."
- You can also set up automatic deletions to prune old data on a rolling basis. Click "Choose to delete automatically" and select a timeframe between 3-18 months.
To view your location history as a visual map:
- Go to google.com/maps/timeline
- Use the calendar on the left to select a date range
- You‘ll see a map and list of places you visited during that period based on your Google location data
- Click on a place to see details like arrival and departure times, directions, and related searches
Again, deleting data here only scrubs it from your Timeline, not Google‘s servers entirely. You‘ll need to go a step further and pause Web & App Activity tracking to prevent it from being collected at all:
- Go to myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols
- Toggle "Web & App Activity" to off
Just be aware this may impact the personalization and functionality of some Google services.
Finally, you can limit which apps are able to ping your phone‘s location in the background:
- On Android: Go to Settings > Location > App permissions and turn off location access for apps you don‘t trust
- On iOS: Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and do the same thing
The Bottom Line
It‘s clear Google‘s location tracking is extensive and not entirely transparent. While the company provides some controls to view and delete this data, the onus is really on users to educate themselves and take proactive steps to manage their privacy.
For its part, Google says it collects location info to power features people want and expect.
"Location information makes our products more useful for people," a spokesperson said in a statement. "We give users control to delete or turn off these features at any time."
Still, critics argue Google should be more upfront about the full extent of its tracking and make the privacy settings more prominent and easier to understand.
"[Google is] not really transparent about what‘s being collected and how it‘s used," says Bennet Cyphers, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "A lot of people don‘t realize that their location is being tracked in so many different ways."
There are signs Google is starting to take these concerns more seriously. In June 2020, it announced plans to auto-delete location history and web activity by default for new accounts. But existing users will still need to make the change manually.
Lawmakers are also taking a closer look at Google‘s location practices. The company is facing multiple lawsuits alleging it misled users about how much data it collects. In Australia, regulators recently launched a probe into whether Google‘s Android location settings are deceptive and unfair to consumers.
For now, the key takeaway is to be proactive about your privacy settings and to understand the tradeoffs of using location-based services. Regularly reviewing and pruning your data can help minimize what‘s collected. But ultimately, the only way to truly hide from Google‘s location tracking machine is not to use its products at all.
){kind=link}