Of course it is, because I opted in when it asked if I wanted to be tracked. Google also sends me an email once a month to remind me I chose to be tracked.
While I agree with the sentiments of what you are saying but the 'move along' has nothing to do with it being Google. This has been known by everybody for a long time and discussed here on HN. All the 'article' shows is that there are some tools to see that info has been collected.
There is no point in flogging a dead horse. So yeah, move along.
Where have I expressed outrage? Also you are clearly highly technology literate, so you understanding something is not representative of what regular users understand when they click through an agreement.
My life as a consultant confuses the heck out of Google Location History/ Now/ Maps.
Hotels are identified as my home address, client sites as work... come to think of it, maybe Google's right in the end and my perception of having a flat that's my home is off. ;)
Yes, I had that problem too :-) You really should disable tracking on stationary devices like tablets that are mostly at home. Your phone probably represents your location faithfully.
"Google Location History is not yet enabled for your Google Account. Please enable Location History and check back in a few days to allow for enough location history to be collected."
What gave me creeps wasn't service or collected data. It was the fact that I am using iPhone for several weeks now. I dont use phone (apps) while commuting since I'm at the wheel. Only app I am using, is Waze, but I believe that their data is not being shared with Google yet. But somehow Google still knows where I've been with gread detail and accuracy.
They have (finally) updated the Google+ app, and the "Locations" functionality is much more like the old Latitude. Also, it works on rooted phones now (previously the map tiles wouldn't load).
Put me down for "cool" rather than "creepy" on this. I'm mostly annoyed that it's missing a good 6 months in the middle for me. Missing 4 countries and some cool locations due to that :-(
The airplane trips section seems particularly bad, it pretty much only gets my home airport right.
Doesn't this constant use of GPS drain the battery?
On every Android-based smartphone I've had ( two! ) I've only enabled GPS and network-derived location when I need to navigate, otherwise the phone shuts-off in a few hours.
I believe it keeps GPS positioning to a minimum, relying primarily on network-derived location data. At least judging by the granularity (or lack of) the route data, which causes my commute to work to look most confusing.
Secondly, and this in my opinion is a bug in their algorithm, when I'm at home it frequently switches to my home location and a location about 10 miles away. The only reason I can see for it to do this is it's predicting my location based on my cell site location (phones know which tower they're connected to, Google must know where all these towers are). And my normal cell tower is 5 miles away (right in the middle of my two "locations"), so clearly the algorithm has determined I'm 5 miles away from a cell tower, but can't make up it's mind in which direction. It needs tweaking to remove data points when I suddenly cover 10 miles in a second, over and over.
Network derived location does not represent a meaningful extra power draw. GPS involves a separate radio system (rx only, admittedly) and is only active when something actually requests your location...
Interesting re: the GPS usage, thank you. I would have thought that the process of repeatedly acquiring the satellites and establishing the fix on demand would have been quite an overhead, though. /me goes to read more
Network location does require wifi to be permanently active, which for some reason seems to be a magnitude more power-hungry than 3G. So most folk I know turn-off wifi when not interactively using it.
I really like this service, since they have this data anyway it's great it's offered reciprocally. In fact I enable location history which takes it to the next step, though it seems to be a battery killer.
What should I make of my most recently visited place, in the sea outside the Gulf of Guinea? Everywhere I've ever been is _really_ far away from there.
Probably not directly but you could use it to remember where you were and try to find someone who saw you.
I can see it being used to help the prosecution with no trouble.
I am just guessing though.
For 99.9% of people it's a great feature and not an issue. For the remaining 0.01% it's a karma-harvesting device because everything Google/privacy related is sure to draw clicks. Hence the infinitude of tabloid-ish articles in all the tech websites and blogs in the past months.
