Google publishes customer’s movement
Tech titan gives up data in hopes to help public health
MOUNTAIN VIEW >> Google on Friday disclosed it is publishing the information it harvests from smartphones to help inform government officials how people’s movements are changing in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
The search giant said it has started to provide aggregated information about people’s visits to stores, groceries, pharmacies, recreation sites, parks, transit stations, workplaces and homes for an array of locations, including movement trends in the United States and California overall, as well as in individual counties.
“Starting today we’re publishing an early release of our COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports to provide insights into what has changed in response to work from home, shelter in place, and other policies aimed at flattening the curve of this pandemic,” Google said in a blog post.
Google’s mobility report revealed that travelers in five Bay Area’s counties — Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and San Francisco — have all increased their visits to residences to a greater degree than is the case in either the United States or California, according to this news organization’s review of the Google information.
The Google tracking technology only identifies the type of site that was visited and doesn’t determine if it’s the personal residence of the smartphone user.
People in the Bay Area also have slashed their visits to workplaces, restaurants, and recreation sites to a much greater degree than people in California or the United States.
“The reports use aggregated, anonymized data to chart movement trends over time by geography, across different high-level categories of places,” according to the blog post.
With one exception — visits to parks — people in the five counties reduced their visits to non-residential locations compared with what happened in California overall, the analysis of the Google statistics shows. The changes in travel patterns were measured against a baseline that Google had previously established.
Plus, people in the five counties are visiting resi
dential locations to a much greater extent than is the case in Southern California, the state and the United States. That could indicate that people are engaging in sheltering efforts to a heightened degree in the Bay Area, the Google information reveals. This news organization included Southern California’s Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Diego County, Riverside County, and San Bernardino County.
Residential sites: Those visits increased by 17.8 percent in the five-county Bay Area, 15.4 percent in Southern California, 15 percent in California, and 12 percent in the United States, Google reported. Residential visits increased by 21 percent in San Francisco, 19 percent in San Mateo County, 17 percent in Alameda County and Santa Clara County, and by 15 percent in Contra Costa County.
Retail and recreational sites: Those visits were slashed by 60.6 percent in the five counties, 48.2 percent in Southern California, 50 percent in California, and 47 percent in the United States. San Francisco travelers reduced visits to these locations by 75 percent and Santa Clara County travelers cut those trips by 62 percent.
Grocery and pharmacy sites: Those visits decreased by 28.8 percent in the five county Bay Area, 24 percent in both Southern California and California, and 22 percent in the United States, the Google data determined. San Francisco travelers chopped those visits by 37 percent and Santa Clara County travelers cut those trips by 33 percent.
Parks: Visits to parks slumped by 28.2 percent in the five counties, 42 percent in Southern California, 38 percent in California, and 19 percent in the United States. Travelers chopped those visits by 55 percent in San Francisco and by 35 percent in San Mateo County.
Workplace sites: Visits to workplaces plunged 46.4 percent in the Bay Area, 39.8 percent in Southern California, 39 percent in California, and 38 percent in the United States. San Francisco travelers cut workplace visits by 53 percent, while Santa Clara County travelers cut visits to workplaces by 48 percent.
Mountain View-based Google sought to mollify privacy concerns regarding the publication of the movements of smartphone users.
“These reports have been developed to be helpful while adhering to our stringent privacy protocols and policies,” Google said in the blog post.
Still, some people offered concerns on Friday about the new Google endeavors. One person who raised a red flag about the situation was Rebecca Rivers, a former Google employee who was terminated after she protested certain practices of the search giant.
“Google has an unimaginable amount of location data on its users,” Rivers said in a post on her Twitter account.
Rivers specifically warned that Google’s tracking efforts could be used to infringe on a person’s liberties and privacy.
“I’ve seen and worked with this location data and it could be used to ‘snitch’ on users and report them to the government for breaking quarantine/lockdown,” Rivers said in a tweet on Friday.