Googled a restaurant and saw it wasnt as busy as it normally is apparently. How does google know that?
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I’m not an expert, but as far as i know, they do it by detecting how many google device are active in a location (in this case, a restaurant).
By “google device” i mean smartphone with google accounts (mostly android) and laptop with google account in it (again, AFAIK).
The more google device are active, the higher the chance that the restaurant is busy.
Reposting my reply in more than one sentence so that it doesn’t get auto deleted again.
They know how many people are in a restaurant in the same way they know how busy traffic is. It’s the GPS on your phone. Transactions happen after the fact and most aren’t through Google pay, so that’s not the viable reason.
It knows that because it knows the location of just about everyone with a cell Phone through their GPS app.
How many phones show up is a good indicator of how busy the restaurant is.
Decades ago people were concerned about someone/entity putting a secret tracking device in their vehicle or on them. Today people pay hundreds of dollars to buy and carry one themselves. ¯_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)_/¯
By detecting how many google devices are in there. Most phones have google apps in them nowadays except for some Apple die hards who refuse to use anything but proprietary apple apps, so it’s generally pretty accurate.
Traffic predictions on google maps work the same way. It’s how a guy famously created a false traffic jam on google maps by dragging a cart full of cellphones
Using the GPS in everyone’s phones, it directly knows how many people are in the restaurant. It’s the same way Google Maps has live traffic data.
Proof:
[If you walk down the road pulling a wagon full of smartphones, it shows up on Google Maps as a traffic jam.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eL_al_m7Q)
If that guy took his wagon of phones to a restaurant, the restaurant would show as “currently extremely busy” on Google.
Every night I get at least half a dozen calls from Google Assistant on the caller ID. It’s an automated thing that always says the same thing.
“Thank you for calling xyz, how can I help you?”
Hello?
“How can I help you?”
Hi! I have a guest who is looking to come in. Could you tell me how long the wait is for a party of 2?
“It’s 30 minutes.”
Oooh. I’ll let *name here* know. Thank you.
I’m sure it’s been aggregating that info for a while. Plus I’m positive they collect location data from people who are using google in-house.
One time a host accidentally said 90 minutes instead of 9 and google updated our wait time on their site as “90 minutes as of *time*.”
If you have the Google Maps app on your phone (whether iOS or Android) there is a very high chance that you have opted in to letting them collect your location whenever they want, even when the app isn’t open. So they routinely sample everyone’s location and use it to power services like live traffic and how busy a restaurant is.
Your device being opted-in to background location (“Always Allow” or something similar when you’re prompted by an app, “while in use” or foreground location permissions changes this behavior and only collects location data while the app is active on your screen) allows google to collect your location data even while you’re not using google maps.
Historical foot traffic data provides a baseline “busy-ness” level and they probably incorporate some degree of live data analysis too to provide current snapshots of “busy-ness”.
I don’t work for google so this could be slightly wrong but that’s generally how foot traffic data analysis works.
Online reservations, phone app payment systems, google search, google maps/directions…however Google tracks people to where they are/going (and through 3rd parties).
Eli5: watch the dark knight. That not at the end where all the phones track where joker is? Yeah. That’s real, and the power is owned by… Google, the zuck and Elon musk.
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