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Google Maps will let you enter Incognito Mode, and it won’t store your data

Christian de Looper
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Sundar Pichai stands in front of a Google logo at Google I/O 2021.
This story is part of our complete Google I/O coverage

Google has started realizing that people care about their online privacy. At Google I/O 2019 the company announced a number of new features for the privacy-aware. Perhaps the biggest and most important feature is that Incognito Mode will now be available in Google Maps.

But what does that mean? Well, when you use Google Maps, your location information is stored by Google, and linked to your Google account. In Incognito Mode, however, that location information won’t be stored — meaning that if you don’t want your information from Maps saved, you no longer have to manually delete it. It’s important to note that just because Google doesn’t have location information about you, that doesn’t mean that your wireless carrier won’t have it. Incognito Mode is also already available on YouTube.

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Incognito Mode in Maps isn’t the only new privacy-focused feature Google announced at Google I/O. The company also discussed new ways to control how much information Google keeps about you. Now, you can tell Google to delete your Google data history after 18 months, three months, or delete it manually. The feature will be coming to your account settings in the coming weeks. The new auto-delete feature was actually first announced last week, but it’s now rolling out — so you can set up your account to delete data now.

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It will soon be easier than ever to access your privacy settings, too. From Google apps, users will soon be able to tap on their profile picture, then tap the “Manage your Google account” button, after which they’ll have access to privacy and security controls. This so-called “one-tap access” will be available this month in Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and more apps on Android

Privacy on Android isn’t the only focus for Google, which also announced a few new privacy features for the web. You can now use any phone with Android 7.0 or later for two-factor authentication, which should help take a lot of the hassle out of safely logging in to your Google account.

Tech companies like Google and Facebook have been increasingly focused on privacy over the past year or so. Google, in particular, has been moving a lot of processing to on-device, which helps ensure that features like Google Assistant are quick and safe.

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Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper
Contributor
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
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