> For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, such as “chocolate chip cookies” or “kids science kits”, pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude accurate to the square foot and save it to your Google account.
Obviously, if you open Maps and you've given the app location permission, it'll get your location. Similarly, if you have weather enabled, it'll regularly update to not become stale. Searches for products is a bit more subtle, I agree, but your browser also asks for location access per site, so you simply can refuse to give it for Google search.
Each of these is connected to a specific feature you're using, it's not just constantly pinging your location for the sake of your location. Each ping is specifically for a service you're using.
The real issue here is the fact that "Web & Apps activity" didn't explicitly mention location, and it happened to be next to this other feature named "Location History", and this juxtaposition implied that the former didn't collect location. That's it, that's the only issue here, and since 2018 thye've fixed it by adding "this might include location data" to Web & Apps activity.
GETTING my location for a map is one thing STORING my location is quite another. Also, I might want to use map to search for where OTHER things are - I don't need to display my current location to search for "a map of Topeka Kansas".
Also, for the weather app specifically, there was a weather app that retrieved your location every 30 seconds (to give you up to date info) - and then promptly sold that data to advertisers. Just because the weather app "needs to poll my location", doesn't mean it should get fine-grained access every 4 hours.
Oh, also, something I learned when I wrote an app for android.
In order for me to use the GPS chip on the cell phone, I needed to: use Google's API, send the phone information (you know, so they could log who was looking at the GPS and where they were); this MANDATED an updated version of the play store.
So if there is some 3rd party app that "you totally trust with your location" - Google is getting that data, too.
What you wrote is highly misleading - the Location API does not need Play Services on Android to work.
You explicitly decided to choose the Google cloud driven API that's hosted in Play Services and thus requires Play Services (and not Play Store!) updates. You didn't have to.
> For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, such as “chocolate chip cookies” or “kids science kits”, pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude accurate to the square foot and save it to your Google account.
Obviously, if you open Maps and you've given the app location permission, it'll get your location. Similarly, if you have weather enabled, it'll regularly update to not become stale. Searches for products is a bit more subtle, I agree, but your browser also asks for location access per site, so you simply can refuse to give it for Google search.
Each of these is connected to a specific feature you're using, it's not just constantly pinging your location for the sake of your location. Each ping is specifically for a service you're using.
The real issue here is the fact that "Web & Apps activity" didn't explicitly mention location, and it happened to be next to this other feature named "Location History", and this juxtaposition implied that the former didn't collect location. That's it, that's the only issue here, and since 2018 thye've fixed it by adding "this might include location data" to Web & Apps activity.