How does Google know that this exact tiny restaurant on the 4th floor of a building full of other restaurants and cafes is “usually busy at 8pm on Wednesday”?
In: 70
They (Google/FB/Apple/etc..) are location tracking every phone in America. They know where you are at all times, even when you’re in a tiny restaurant on the 4th floor of a building full of other restaurants and cafes.
your cellphone is walking transmitter.
Same way if the story goes where i guy gets 100 phones and walks down an empty street to show on google maps the road is busy.
In a nutshell: Your phone sends location data to google, which allows google to track the information. Thanks to these informations, they know how busy it is (or how busy it will be)
Sidenote: This also applies to google maps navigation, lots of data allows to predict traffic even in the future (and quite accurate too)
Lots of guessing based in phones data. It’ll be wrong for many, but on average it’ll work out.
Basic location is simply gps.
Altitude is the tricky part. GPS didn’t do that well.
Your phone can estimate altitude from it’s barometer. By measuring the change in air pressure the office can detect elevation changes within a few feet.
And another eat to pinpoint your location is if your phone contacts a wifi network with a known location.
Or if you use your phone to pay at a point of sale that also registers a location.
The amount of precision the tech companies can have about your exact motion is pretty wild. Your phone serves pretty good as a training device, like ankle monitors we choose to carry around.
It’s one reason I’m always urge policy makers to create limits on this information and it’s use.
Because Google tracks users of Android phones, with the exception of those who turn off location tracking (which most people probably don’t).
If you’ve got an Android phone and Google’s location services turned on, The phone will periodically send your location to Google, and if a lot of Android phones are in the same spot, Google will assume the place is busy.
Google might also use a bunch of different indicators to determine who is at a particular restaurant. I don’t know if they actually use these, but they could possibly use:
* If you’re using their free wifi and they have a Google Analytics on their login page
* If the website mentions wait times (e.g. if a restaurant is using Zwift for online orders, their online menu may show “Average wait time: 10 minutes” or similar)
* If a person reviews the restaurant and attaches a timestamped photo
And given that Android has about 70% of the market share and 80% of people own a smartphone, Google can be reasonably confident that a place is busy based on a number of people having suitable phones.
However with this in mind, it’s very easy to [buy a ton of phones and cause a traffic jam](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artist-simon-weckert-google-map-hack-1769187), so busy times may not always be accurate, especially if there’s an equally popular business next door.
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