On the morning of 22nd March 2025 I received and read an email from Google giving me an “update” on my “Google Maps Timeline”, little did I know this was actually telling me they had just lost some of my data…
The email read…
We briefly experienced a technical issue that caused the deletion of Timeline data for some people. We’re reaching out as your account may have been impacted.
If you have encrypted backups enabled, you may be able to restore your data. Make sure that you have the latest version of Google Maps, then go to your Timeline. Tap the cloud icon near the top of your screen, and choose a backup to import your data. If you did not have backups turned on, unfortunately you will not be able to recover lost data.
We understand that this can be frustrating if you use Timeline to remember places that you’ve visited, and we are taking steps to improve our systems for the future.
I have heard of Google loosing data before (drive files and or photos disappearing and such), or making it inaccessible for people, and so far I’m glad to not have been affected, and have never really dived into these cases before to see if it has happened.
However, it was easy to see in a matter of minutes that ~10 years of location data was indeed gone from my phone… With data only showing from the 6th or 7th of March.
