For years, Google has allowed users to control their “location history”, which stores a detailed record of where they’ve been. Though we’re aware that Google is logging these whereabouts, the details of place and movement are being processed in the background and we often take for granted the tools that can show us this information. Google Takeout debuted in 2011 as a tool for downloading your own Google data and now enables you to export material from at least 50 different services including Gmail and chat.
The volume of this information shows how deep and inescapable our relationship with Google has become. There are some straightforward utilities of Takeout like the ability to download your photos and upload them somewhere else. It is also possible to browse your recorded location history and export it in raw form. Laid out in a spreadsheet, the data becomes clear as quintessential surveillance while at the same time feeling incomprehensible.
In 2014, a high school student named Theo Patt released the Location History Visualizer tool to give shape to the information. His site became a minor sensation where users could understand their data on an intense color-coded map. To learn more about the new features of the Visualizer, and why some people prefer to turn their location history as “off” as Google will allow, visit here.