Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Maps users will no longer be able to follow other users or have profile followers come September.
- All data related to your followers and who you follow will be deleted.
- You’ll still be able to connect with contributors through Local Guides Connect.
Google Maps is chock-full of features, almost to the point of feature overload. However, in the next few months, there will be one less feature for you to worry about. The tech giant is pulling the plug on the app’s follow feature.
In a community support post, Google announced that you will no longer be able to follow other users on Google Maps. Likewise, other users won’t be able to follow you either, meaning you’ll be losing your profile followers. The ability to follow contributors in the app is scheduled to be phased out by September. You won’t have to do anything as this update will happen automatically.
Google notes that this change won’t have an impact on your profile visibility. You also won’t have to worry about accepting or rejecting followers on your restricted profile since there won’t be any followers going forward. Additionally, Google says it’s wiping out any data related to your followers and who you follow after the feature is removed.
Although the ability to follow will soon be gone, you’ll still be able to connect with others through Local Guides Connect. The company also mentions that you’ll still be able to create lists for finding new places and opportunities to explore.
This news arrives only about a month after we conducted an APK teardown of the Google Maps app. That teardown revealed that Google planned to shut down the app’s Follow Places feature.
