Google Maps customers have not too long ago been complaining on locations like Reddit that their Timeline knowledge — the app’s historic report of the place they’ve been — had disappeared. Now, Google has confirmed that it by chance deleted the information and that anybody who wasn’t utilizing Google’s cloud backups is out of luck.
Google spokesperson Genevieve Park offered this assertion in an electronic mail to The Verge:
We briefly skilled a technical situation that prompted the deletion of Timeline knowledge for some folks. Nearly everybody with encrypted Timeline backups will be capable to restore their knowledge; sadly those that didn’t have backups enabled won’t be able to recuperate misplaced knowledge.
In a Reddit publish that Android Authority noticed, customers reported getting the same assertion in an electronic mail from Google that included directions for recovering the information for individuals who’d turned on the app’s cloud backup characteristic. To see if it’s on for you, faucet your consumer icon within the iOS or Android Google Maps app, then “Your timeline,” and search for a cloud icon with both an arrow inside it (on) or a line by way of it (off). You can faucet the icon to vary your backup settings.
Google warned customers final summer season that it was switching to on-device storage for Google Maps location knowledge. That meant you may hold monitor of your Maps location historical past with out having it tracked on Google’s servers, which is nice for privateness however comes with the danger of it abruptly vanishing, as Google’s “technical situation” reveals. And sadly, whereas Google Maps permits you to export location historical past knowledge to a file, Google’s directions for recovering Timeline knowledge embrace no apparent approach to reimport the information that doesn’t contain the cloud backup servers.
Update March twenty third: Updated with affirmation from Google spokesperson Genevieve Park.
