Google officially releases location data based report to help organizations fight COVID-19 spread

The report provides graphs and details for several categories: retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, workplaces and residential areas. The reports will be available for a limited time, for as long as health organizations consider them useful in the fight against the public health crisis.

Example report for Texas noting the decrease of visits to places in March compared to February 2020

Additionally, Google states that it is collecting and providing the data while following strict privacy guidelines. The company assures that no personally identifiable information and individual’s location, contacts or movement is going to be disclosed at any given point. The data, collected from the report, is based on aggregated, anonymized info sets from users with Location History turned on, which is off by default, and is going to be updated regularly to provide accurate information.