Facebook is the undisputed king of consumer data, with vast troves of information on our every habit, interest and personal interaction that we've unconsciously provided to The Social Network in our time utilizing the various aspects of their platform. But don't sleep on Google and their data stores, they too have access to a wide range of consumer information - likely wider than you realize - and they've showcased it with two new additions announced within the last week.
Your Timeline
Last week, Google unveiled its new "Your Timeline" feature which shows you a history of all the places you've been over time, as tracked by your mobile device.
It's a little bit creepy, though Google (sensibly) isn't quite angling it as such:
"Have you ever wanted a way to easily remember all the places you've been -- whether it's a museum you visited during your last vacation or that fun bar you stumbled upon a few months ago? Well, starting today, Google Maps can help. We're gradually rolling out Your Timeline, a useful way to remember and view the places you've been on a given day, month or year. Your Timeline allows you to visualize your real-world routines, easily see the trips you've taken and get a glimpse of the places where you spend your time. And if you use Google Photos, we'll show the photos you took when viewing a specific day, to help resurface your memories."
As per the release, "Your Timeline" is integrated with Google Photos so Google can automatically tag your images with location data in order to keep track of exactly where you were, and when, helping you free up space in your brain for other things like dates of birthdays and anniversaries and other important things you need more memory capacity for (though they also have apps to remember that stuff for you too, if you really can't be bothered).
Actually, given Google's efforts to render physical human memory obsolete, it's no surprise that they recently filed a patent for a wearable device that would effectively be able to record your day-to-day life and add it to your "real-world experience history" data bank - in essence quantifying your memories.
But of course, "Your Timeline" only works if you opt-in to Google tracking all your location data - you get all these great new features, Google gets all your data in return - but not all of Google's data tracking requires expressed permission, at least not in the same way.
Rush Hour
Yesterday, Google announced an update to search that aims to help users in planning their shopping trips. It's a relatively minor addition - when you search for a business' details via Google's mobile search, then click the relevant search match to see further information like the store's address, phone number and open hours, you'll now also be shown a little graph at the bottom of the screen of "popular times", the times of the day when that particular business is at it's busiest.
Pretty interesting, right? Google says this will enable consumers to avoid long lines and wait times:
"Do you ever find yourself trying to avoid long lines or wondering when is the best time to go grocery shopping, pick up coffee or hit the gym (hint: avoid Monday after work)? You're in luck!
Now, you can avoid the wait and see the busiest times of the week at millions of places and businesses around the world directly from Google Search."
It's a clever addition, but surely it can't be that accurate - how could Google know how many people are in a store at any given time? Again, you're likely underestimating Google's data banks.
Way back in 2009, Google published a blog which detailed how they could use mobile GPS data to better track traffic congestion. In the post, Google prompted users to enable anonymized location tracking via their phone, framing it as something of a public service:
"It takes almost zero effort on your part - just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car - and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody."
This type of location tracking is active on all phones unless disabled - your mobile devices is always tracking your GPS co-ordinates and data and storing it within its processor, as evidenced by "Your Timeline" above. But you have a choice as to what you share and don't share with Google - in your settings for Google Maps you can stop Google from accessing your location data by switching off access so you either never share anything, or you only share while using the app.
The thing is, everyone uses Google Maps at some stage, so you're likely going to want to have it switched on, and anytime you do allow access, you're also enabling access to all your data, all your historical location info, as stored in your phone. There are hundreds of millions of smartphones in the world, and Google's able to utilize the majority of them as data points, reference info they can utilize to build tracking systems and contextual mapping functionality - this is how they can provide pretty accurate listings of how many people are in any given store at any given time.
The More You Know
While the addition of both "Your Timeline" and "popular times" are both relatively small in the wider scheme of things, they're almost like a little reminder from Google - while the marketing world's going crazy about big data and the explosion of data insights and intelligence to be gained via social media, Google too has their own store of mass information, insights that can be used to increase efficiency and improve decision making on a wide scale, and in many applications.
And Google is tracking a lot of information - through the use of anonymized data, Google can track the movement patterns, and details from within those movements, of millions of people. In their original notes on tracking traffic snarls, Google noted that they could determine how fast a person was going based on their phone data:
"When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers."
That next level of data - not only where you're going, but how you're getting there - is important, and it underlines the depth of information Google can access. Combine this with consumers' softening opposition to location-based services and it's pretty clear that Google's data reach is extensive - likely more extensive than you care to realize.
Is that a good thing? Is it bad? The data's only really valuable to Google when it's anonymized - the potential fallout if it weren't is too great for them to risk. Given that, the benefits of such access are amazing, the things we can learn from these wider insight can provide more intelligent pathways and inform better decisions.
Should you be concerned about such data tracking? Probably not, though this largely depends on your individual perspective. But should you be aware of it? Absolutely.