Google admits accidentally deleting Timeline data of Google Maps users due to a ‘technical issue’

Users of Google Maps have been complaining in growing numbers that their Timeline data has mysteriously vanished. Now Google has confirmed that this was down to a “technical issue” rather than user error, and warned that there will be no way to recover this data for some people.

The Timeline feature of Google Maps stores location history, and is used by many people as a way of keeping track of places they have visited. Now, for those who were unaware of a recent change to the way Timeline data is stored, the technical SNAFU means that these memories are lost forever.

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Google has been advising users of Google Maps for a while that it was making a change to the way it stored location data. The change meant that Timeline data was no longer stored on Google servers, and was instead saved locally on devices. While this was broadly welcomed by those with privacy concerns, it was necessary to manually enable cloud backup to safeguard this data.

Few details have been provided about what has gone wrong, but in a statement, Google’s Genevieve Park said:

We briefly experienced a technical issue that caused the deletion of Timeline data for some people. Nearly everyone with encrypted Timeline backups will be able to restore their data; unfortunately those who did not have backups enabled will not be able to recover lost data.

Google has also started to email those who have been affected by the technical issue, providing details of how to recover Timeline data if a cloud backup exists. But as this setting was not switched on by default, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people who do not have this recovery route available to them.

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