Google Timeline

Timeline

Surfing around, reading news and whatnot, an article popped up in my way about a new thing Google's pushing out, Google Timeline. We all know Google's tracking everything we do. That's the price we pay for

the tools Google gives us. I'm ok with that. After all, everybody is tracking you these days, at least The Goog is open about what they're doing, plus they give us some pretty cool stuff in exchange. Anyway, I usually just think about this as tracking my online presence. I know there are services that come in to the real world, I just don't think about it much. Timeline may change that a bit, make it a little more obvious that Google is tracking you online and in the real world. 

Timeline is a feature of Google Maps that, as long as your Android phone has had location tracking enabled, can show you where you were and when. Your routes, your destinations, and how long you spent at each place is indexed and searchable right there in your browser. If you happened to snap a picture in one of your tracked locations, Google will even show you what you were doing, sort of. Your pictures may show up in your timeline. 

This can be very revealing information, so by default the information is private, nobody but you can see it. There are some sharing options that I haven't really explored, but if you want to have some fun, navigate on over to www.google.com/maps/timeline and sign in. You'll be entertained, you'll be informed...you may even be a little bit disturbed.