Google: Location data is deliberately difficult to find

In a legal dispute between Google and the US state of Arizona,

Unvalued documents
This week provided interesting insights into the practices of the Internet team. Documents show that company executives and engineers are aware of how difficult it is for Android users to access their personal location data. According to reports, Google continued to collect location data even though users had disabled location sharing services in many places. Google has made it difficult for LG and other smartphone makers to find and pressurize these systems to hide these options in their user interfaces as well.

Jack Menzel, the former vice president of Google Maps, admitted during talks that the only way Google could find out the work and home addresses of its users was to mislead the data. According to the documents, even Zhen Chai, senior product manager for location services, did not know how the different privacy systems interact with each other. So far, neither Google nor LG has commented on the documents.

Unvaluated files are part of a legal process in the United States. Google was charged last year by the Arizona State Attorney General for illegally collecting location data from smartphone users, even though they avoided collecting it.