[machinesmachine]

Also interested. Could you describe the process?

[RosanaAnaDana]

Sure. I pulled my data in the standard takeout.google.com/ process. The result is a json (? iirc). I parsed the json into x, y, and rasterized it using gdal.

https://imgur.com/a/ZhyTsDV

See I wasn't sure if I lost it in the couch in the living room, the office, or the bedroom. This got me within a few feet.

[crazygringo]

That's amazing, so cool.

Is that something Google's not doing with the data, but could? (E.g. they don't because their maps don't show most houses precisely enough or whatever, so it wouldn't be useful?)

Or is it relying on the fact that you are triangulating or similar from the known exact position of your WiFi routers or similar down to the inch, and Google doesn't have any way of knowing that?

[Phlarp]

Or they do and have internally assessed that it would be too creepy to provide to users, but are happily using it to better target advertising.

[HALtheWise]

Or they have decided that it's too creepy to use at all, so they don't use it for targeted advertising. Seriously, why does everyone assume that companies are evilly cackling in volcano lairs? They know that violating user trust is really expensive and a bad idea.

By the way, I'm pretty sure I've seen that Google's advertising targeting is only allowed to use "neighborhood level" location, which is designed to be coarse enough to not allow specifying individual people.

[inetknght]

On the other hand, if the information is aggregated to a final answer, why is the data then kept? What if the _wrong people_ get ahold of the more sensitive information _because_ the data was kept beyond its useful life?

[eitland]

In their defense: it is perfectly fine with me to keep my location data, so I can download it later and do cool and/or useful things with it as long as

- it is opt in,

- it can be deleted by me

- is not given to anyone else

For all my trashing of Google lately (check my comment history) I actually expect and belive them to defend my raw data in a way that few others are able to. It all boils down to incentives:

- as long as they keep the data between them and me they can sell targeted ads again and again. If the data leaks then others can skip the middle man.

- as long as they keep their reputation as nice guys that is an immense advantage.

Now this might of course be changing, so everyone should consider if they personally trust this arrangement going for the future:

- it seems some part of the organization is tightening the screws around the Chrome team to squeeze out more revenue.

- of the data is available there is always the risk of attacks both cyber attacks as well as legal attacks.

[sharpneli]

So that you can later change your aggregation method. Just run the raw data trough it again.

[Phlarp]

Because time and time again it is proven that "these companies" (Facebook and Google) will use any signal they can get their hands on to make money?

I'm pretty sure they've both been caught with their hands in the cookie jar doing things they swore they never would.

[LordDragonfang]

Genuinely curious, could you provide an example of Google "doing things they swore they never would" with consumer data? Because I know they do plenty of things with data that people think are creepy, but I don't recall ever seeing a story about them doing things they swore they wouldn't (besides the nebulous "don't be evil") or even lying about what they were actually doing with consumer data.

If it's happened time and time again, it should be easy to pull up a source, right?

[FridgeSeal]

Because corporations have an underlying profit motive, so if there’s something that they _can_ do to make money, they will almost certainly try?

This isn’t a controversial point, it’s well observed.

[_Codemonkeyism]

From my experience from within large companies will do everything within the boundaries [1] of law to make more money.

[1] sometimes outside if they think they can argue it to be a novel situation

[Xelbair]

They are a business.

Their only goal is the make money - by definition. It is not that people assume that they are evil - just that they will follow on things that will earn them money.

[amelius]

Uhm, yeah but an evil person also follows on things that benefit them. Does this somehow make this person ok?

[bredren]

No comment other than appreciation of the evil volcanic lair imagery.

Reminds me of Superjail, which is an uber-maximum security jail inside a volcano, that is itself inside a second volcano

[diminoten]

Fiduciary duty to shareholders makes good people do bad things...

[Phlarp]

Zucks fiduciary responsibility is entirely theoretical. The shareholders have no voting power against him.

[abakker]

Do you get toilet paper ads when browsing in the restroom?

[bigiain]

My new startup uses SDKs embedded into popular apps that make ultrasonic clicks and use sonar-like reflections to estimate the length of toilet paper remaining on the roll (using AI, machine learning, and blockchain, obviously). /s

[flattone]

Perhaps this level of location resolution is not stable enough at Google scale to present it? AKA: better to show reliable fuzzy information than unreliable precise information.

[dannyw]

Considering that google has a history of cloaking information via the UI (see purchase history hidden if you have G Suite, but still fully accessible via takeout), and that Google offers advertisers the ability to see if you have visited a particular store even in an indoor mall, I am sure google knows your location more precise than it reports.

[gricardo99]

This is pretty cool, but I'm still confused on what data you used.

By my data, do you mean data from Google Android Device Configuration Service?

If you're logged into Chrome or GSuite tools from desktop locations, I just wonder how useful the data from those other products would be, if it even has location data.

I'm downloading my data archive to check it out...

[RosanaAnaDana]

I think its https://takeout.google.com/ where I got the data. Then its just a json which is relatively easy to parse.

[icelancer]

Ha, this is an awesome use of the data. What a cool plot showing the "density" of pings.