Google Maps users risk losing much of their location history. Indeed, the digital giant has announced a significant modification to its Timeline service, the functionality which allows you to view your past trips.
How to save your history?
This new policy involves transferring location history from the cloud to the device’s local storage. Concretely, only data from the last three months will remain available by default. This modification, which was initially supposed to be effective in December 2023, could even arrive earlier, according to the emails received by certain users who mention a deadline of November 19.
Launched in 2015, this Timeline is appreciated for its practical and… sentimental side! It traces the journeys, visits and trips of users, a sort of digital travelogue. In addition to its memory function, it also and above all allowed Google to analyze user movements to improve its advertising targeting. However, the era where every trip was accessible on the cloud is coming to an end. From now on, the Timeline will become specific to each device, limiting access to data from other terminals.
Faced with this change, many users want to keep their history. The Google email provides a link allowing data to be saved beyond the regulatory three months. However, be careful! Users have reported that this option has, in some cases, resulted in their history being completely deleted. To avoid this inconvenience, an alternative is possible: Google Takeout.
Google Takeout allows you to manually export a copy of location history. To do this, go to takeout.google.com, uncheck all options except “Location history (Your trips)”, then start the export. By saving this data on an external medium, you ensure that you do not lose track of your movements. An essential step for those who want to keep their geolocated memories without risking accidental deletion.
This policy change is not an isolated case. It continues a trend started by Google in recent years, where several free cloud-based services have either been removed or moved to paid subscriptions or on-premises functions. Google Photos, for example, ended its free unlimited storage in 2021, and YouTube now offers some features exclusively to Premium subscribers.
For Timeline users, this move to local storage also means the end of access to their history from the web. From now on, saved journeys will be linked to the device used at the time of the trip, making centralized consultation on a Google account impossible.
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