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markstos parent
The article says turning off Location History "cripples" certain features of Android and Google.

That's a stretch. I have had Location History disabled for years and have yet to notice what crippled experience I suffered from, but I did learn today that my location is not being sent to Google when Bluetooth is turned off.

Disabling Location History seems like it has significant upside to me.

Think about it this way. If Location History had defaulted to "off" instead and "on", would you have opted in? For what feature or benefit? With what risks?

kilo_bravo_3
>would you have opted in?

Yes.

>For what feature or benefit?

By the time I pull into my driveway my garage door has opened and the lights in my hallway have turned on.

If I'm working from home, my thermostat stays at its "comfy" setting. If I leave the geofence between certain hours during the week it goes into "ultra cheap-ass energy miser" mode.

When I am at a meeting, and I have another meeting in a different location, my Maps application checks the traffic to the route and tells me if I have to leave early due to congestion. This is especially useful for dentist appointments made six months ago that have slipped my mind.

When I turn on my car and my phone connects, it knows if I am likely to be heading to work or if I am heading home and will suggest the best of three routes to take depending on traffic.

If I am somewhere and have an idea, I hold my smartwatch up to my face and ask it to "remind me when I get to X to do Y" and then when I get to X a notification pops up to tell me to do Y.

I get hyper-local weather notifications. Just 5 minutes ago on my smartwatch a notification popped up saying that rain was starting. It then started raining. There have been times when I have been outside not expecting rain, had my watch say "oh man rain's a-comin!" and then I looked around at the clear skies and said "nuhuh... I looked at the forecast today and there's no rain" but then I went inside to check on the computer again and it started raining.

While driving I can just ask: hey give me directions to the nearest gas station, and it will. No looking at screens required.

>With what risks?

None. There are literally zero risks. Evil Ruskie hackers could haxxor all of my data and know that I go to work every (non-quarantined) day and go to Safeway every Sunday afternoon, and it would not change or endanger my life in any way whatsoever. Anything they could do with the data, they can do without.

myopenid
This kind of hyper-connected lifestyle seems..... kind of exhausting. Constant barrage of information that you may or may not need; being reliant on many bits and pieces of services that change all the time (when they drop out of support or starts asking for money) in which you have to adapt or find alternatives to.
markstos OP
I see things in this list which require your current location, but it's not clear that any of them require storing your permanent location history.

Why is Google storing your location history if they don't need it to offer these services you care about?

scatters
Having location history means that Maps knows places I visit often, so they're highlighted on the map and in the search box, saving time if I want to navigate there or find out opening times. It speeds up time-to-fix with GPS. It allows Google Pay to have the supermarket loyalty card ready when I get to the checkout. Little things like that.
markstos OP
Last time I checked, Google Pay stores your credit card number in the cloud, which is not necessary. Both Apple Pay and Garmin Pay only store the card in an encrypted form locally.

So giving Google my location history so I can also give them my credit card numbers when they don't need those either is not considered a feature.

I use Google Maps frequently and have been bothered by any behavior changes there. My home address auto-completes easily enough and in some contexts Google clearly does seem to know my "Home" address (which I'd tell them if they just asked if they didn't want my lifetime location history along with it).

soared
Google pay works on many different devices, something apple and garmin don't need at the same scale. I have google pay on a couple different laptops, phones, and tablets and wouldn't want to re-enter details 10 times.
reaperducer
I have google pay on a couple different laptops, phones, and tablets and wouldn't want to re-enter details 10 times.

If I save a credit card on my iPhone it saves that information to all of my iOS devices, and all of my Macs automatically. Even devices going back to 2012.

three_seagrass
Google pay is also more of a competitor with Paypal than Apple pay. Not very many websites allow Apple pay on a desktop, for example.
catalogia
> It speeds up time-to-fix with GPS

There has been something seriously fucked with Google Maps in this particular regard. On my phone with my location/privacy settings, it takes Google Maps 5-10x times as long to get a location fix as it takes OSMAnd. It works eventually, but it's dog slow.

kibwen
There was a time when Google Maps would simply refuse to work without having Location History turned on; not sure if that has changed by now.
izacus
That was never true. It was annoyingly aggresive, had some annoying UI limitations (e.g. it wouldn't remember past trips) but it was never fully unable to function.
ilikehurdles
You couldn't even save locations (such as a "home" or "work" location) without allowing google to track your location history.
tomcatfish
I have a screenshot that actually shows the locations you have saved before are still saved, it just does not let you access them, which proves this was just to annoy users.
izacus
Yes, that sucked, which is why I mentioned it.
kibwen
I recall it being true on my 2014-era phones (can't recall if it was a Moto G or a Pixel). I wrestled with turning Location Services on and off every time I wanted to navigate until I eventually gave up and left it on permanently. Opening the app with Location Services off would produce an (as far as I knew) undissmissable prompt demanding that Location Services be turned back on. Perhaps there was some way to work around this, but it's clear what message they were trying to send.
izacus
Don't mix Location Services and Location History (confusing but similarly named things - Google at it's best :P).

Location Services provide... location. Without it, Maps obviously won't work. Location History sends your location to Google servers and you should probably turn it off.

tomcatfish
The thing the posters likely are noting is that maps (lowercase 'm', just a regular map) work totally fine without knowing where you are, and Google Maps should too.
rypskar
I would say only giving the first voice direction when using maps to find a location is not working. I was using maps to find a place the GPS-map in my car didn't find, maps told which direction to start, but after starting to drive it did pop up a message that location history had to be turned on to get more directions
nitrogen
It still only shows "home" and "work" addresses in one obscure part of the UI with history off, while the rest of the UI won't let you change or add saved addresses without turning history back on.
markstos OP
This is a false requirement. Google doesn't need to track my real-time location to allow me to tell it the location of my home or work.
lonelappde
It's due to a technical detail. Because of how the software was built, turning on Home/Work would have led to the data being slurped into the servers as a side effect of the overall architecture, so they had to block the Home/Work in no-History feature until they fix the data flow. Up to you to judge why they didn't prioritize fixing that bug earlier.
cptskippy
I remember it not working.
jschwartzi
On the LG phones I've used Google Maps is insanely slow when Location History is disabled. Same on the Samsung S7 my fiance uses.
izacus
Do you also have the Google service disabled? Because that will then fallback to pure GPS lock which needs of order of minutes to get a lock in cities and closed spaces. Since LH doesn't retrieve GPS data in background, the GPS location isn't warmed up and you need to wait for it.
jschwartzi
No, I mean the search bar and some features of the app are slow.

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