Though i'm an avid Google Maps user and contributor for Maps, i never wanted Google Maps to store my location history. Many times Google Maps used to prompt me to turn-on the location history which i simply ignored. But, to my surprise today Google Maps has upped the ante by forcing me to enable location history if i want to share my real-time location. Which was not the case earlier. An user can share his/her real-time location upto an hour without enabling the location history. Slowly cornering an user to share the personal info doesn't seem like a good practice.
I never liked the realtime location sharing apps/feature built into other apps, they all had one or more of these issues:<p>- requires accounts / linking to accounts<p>- has time limit<p>- can't adjust location provider / update frequency<p>- no public urls / requires app also for the viewer<p>- public urls that could be guessed<p>- built only with driving in mind<p>So, (shameless plug) I made my own privacy conscious real-time location sharing Android app:<p>- <a href="https://graticule.link/" rel="nofollow">https://graticule.link/</a> (tracking page demo)<p>- <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emilburzo.graticule" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emilburzo....</a>
Unfortunately it's a free product. So whatever they decide you have no choice to go along with it, if you want to continue using that feature.<p>WhatsApp has the same feature, if you want to give your data to Facebook instead.<p>I presume there are other providers that have similar functionality.