Google Shows How Many Minutes People Spend At Venues

[Andy]

An interesting post just published at search engine roundtable

Google Shows How Many Minutes People Spend At Venues

I surmise Google must know this only if one is logged in into one of their properties. I mean, if I search on google maps and then log out of (and also log out of other properties, ie gmail etc..) then it should not know how much time I spend at a specific location, right (?)

 

[ridgerunner]

If you have an Android phone then you will always be logged in, then you just need to have the location tracker on and you now are giving Google everything it needs.

 

[James Watt]

By default, Google tracks your location if you have an android phone. That's also how they get such accurate measures of traffic flow patterns for Google maps: I'd bet upwards of 10% of the cars on the road are a datapoint for Google, maybe even more like 50%+. If your phone's on, unless you opted out (it's not challenging to do, but most people don't know about it) then Google's learning a lot about your daily life, and they're using it too. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's gotten a message to review and answer questions about the place I just ate at 20 minutes after leaving.