Of all the features Google has killed, I will miss this one the most

A few months ago, I opened Google Maps and went to check my Timeline only to get the dreaded notification that my Timeline was going away — at least in its original server-hosted form. Instead, Google was switching to a phone-centric Timeline where your whereabouts are saved on your Android phone, not on a black box somewhere in Google’s server farm, for privacy reasons.

While I completely understand and agree with the benefits of exercising more privacy, especially when it comes to my personal location (which could reveal my home address, darkest habits, secrets detrimental to my personal or professional life, or even tidbits for my health insurance that I don’t want to reveal), I still can’t help but mourn the loss of Timeline as we knew it. Even now, many months later, having transitioned to the new local-only Timeline, I still lament the old way of doing things. It was a simple, useful at times, delightful at others, Google feature, and I miss it a lot.

How I used my personal Maps Timeline

Although I never really used my Google Maps Timeline multiple times a day, I was still glad it ran in the background and saved my movements all the time, no matter what phone I was using (and believe me, as a reviewer and tester, sometimes there were several!), so I could always turn to it and consult it when I had a question.

“Remember that yogurt place outside of Bhaktapur that the driver stopped by on the way back to Kathmandu?” Or maybe, “what’s the name of that bridge I drove across on my way from Athens to Missolonghi?” Google Maps’ Timeline always had those answers that I’d long ago forgotten. It’s a bit like an organized version of my visual memory. If I can vaguely place a memory, Timeline helps me find exactly where and when it occurred, and it’s especially handy if I never took any photo in that place. Otherwise, yes, it’s easier to just check Google Photos instead.

But it’s not just about distant memories and places. I’ve turned to my Timeline to remember things as recent as a few days ago, especially when I notice charges on my bank card from a place whose name I don’t remember. “Where was I last Wednesday, and why is there a €15 expense then? What did I get?” You’d think either my husband or I would be able to remember these, but our memory is bad enough these days that it’s just easier to check our Timeline and let it remind us of where we’ve been and what we’ve done. “Oh, it’s the coffee shop we stopped by on our way to the park!” Mystery solved.

And for someone like me, who loves exploring new cities and towns, visiting places, and checking out parks and museums, Timeline provided the oh-so-satisfying visual organization of my trips that I craved. All the countries I’ve been to, cities, and places are perfectly organized and easy to browse by type, date, or map. I loved this!

Gone, but not completely forgotten

If you acted fast like I did and checked your Google Maps app, you probably had the option to save your existing timeline by migrating it all to your phone. So, instead of all those years of data going away, I kept them locked in to check up on them when needed.

Google Maps also gave me the option to choose whether I wanted my location data to be deleted every three months or if I wanted to keep it forever on my phone. It offered to let me back up my timeline, in an encrypted form, to my Google Drive account, so I could restore it if I reset my phone or move to another one. That’s something I immediately opted into this, and I noticed that the latest backup is often a few hours to one day old — not more. At least I don’t have to create a manual backup every few days or risk losing my data!

All in all, I think Google has taken the right steps to mitigate the loss and provide as equal of an experience as it could without openly saving the data along with our accounts and personal identifiers. But, personally, many months later, I’m still very wary of this change. I’ve already set my timeline to save my location indefinitely many times, and I still come back to see it has switched back to deleting every three months. It hasn’t actually deleted anything, so this may just be a display bug while Maps remembers my real preference, but I live in fear of it deciding to override my decision. I’ve also seen reports of people claiming they’ve lost their entire timeline even though they asked for it to be saved to their phones.

Even if those were temporary bugs, there’s still the fringe case of me using multiple phones and having to switch between them across any given day or week. Right now, my Timeline is saved to my Pixel 9 Pro XL and I don’t have the patience — or frankly, the memory — to back up and restore my timeline each time I’ve picked up a new phone for the day, which means I’ve been saving small strings of my timeline across multiple devices and inevitably losing the data from those secondary phones.

So, farewell, Timeline. Like most useful and unsung Google features, you were minor and hidden, but you helped me when I needed you and delighted me with your simplicity and efficacy!