[eka1]

Was this change made to comply with regulation or save on cloud resources?

[beardyw]

My understanding is that they get a lot of demands from law enforcement for this data, so they would rather not have it.

[LanceH]

I didn't see anything in the article that said they are (for sure) not retaining this data.

"Google could purge some or all of your location history when it sunsets Timeline’s web access" -- or they might not. It just won't be available to the user.

[datadrivenangel]

That google maps feature was probably supported by a team of 5 that they decided they didn't want to use for that anymore.

And some PM decided they could get a promo by 'unifying interfaces to simplify and enhance the user experience'