Google employees themselves found interface with location settings confusing

Google employees expressed surprise in 2018 at the way the location access tracking privacy settings worked. This is evident from documents that have become public in a lawsuit.

The Google employees found the interface itself confusing and were also unaware that location tracking is on even when users turned it off, according to internal emails Arizona Mirror found in court documents. If users turned off Location History, Google would still save the location when opening Maps, for some searches, and via weather information.

The fact that Google requested and stored the location via various services, while the institution said that Google would no longer store the location, created confusion, the employees reasoned. “Speaking as a user, what? More specifically, I thought I had location tracking turned off on my phone. So our communication about this confuses even a privacy-focused Google engineer. That’s not good.”

Google tells Arizona Mirror in a response that the people who speak in the document worked to simplify the settings and make them more accessible. In the meantime, the settings around location tracking have been adjusted. The lawsuit is from the state of Arizona, which accuses Google of misleading consumers with the settings.