My girlfriend was hiking near snowmass Colorado and wasn’t sure which path to take at one point. I opened google timeline, browsed back to 4 years before when I did the hike and told her to take a left.

I also regularly use google timeline and web history to figure out what I was doing a few months before when I hade a cryptic credit card charge for example.

I've had this (perhaps strange) thought where I am able to see my entire life traced out as my wanderings in two dimensions across the surface of this planet. Others too, for example co-workers I would come to know, girlfriends (ex-girlfriends as well as the one that would become my wife) and friends, relatives too would be traced — synchronized in time.

Watching the whole thing sped up and perhaps you begin to see life, or parts of your life anyway, as the humdrum of commuting, daily to and from the same job, same grocery stores, etc. — back and forth. Then punctuated occasionally, briefly, by a road trip, a trip abroad, or a permanent move to a new city (and new routines, cycles).

And then you get to see if there were ever tiny instants where you crossed paths, unknowingly, with a future wife/lover/coworker. Relatives who die: their traces drop off....

I know, I'm on a tangent here and this app was probably not designed as a tool for some sort of avant-garde pipe dream. But when you asked about why I would be interested in location data, that's what crosses my mind. :-)

Without going into much detail, I needed to write a personal statement talking about events that took place in the course of three years, and Google maps storing my locations by the minute was very helpful. Example: I traveled to city A between two dates, I know I flew there then drove back. I knew I went to this coffee shop at a specific hour and stayed there for 43 minutes... Etc

My only wish is if I was self hosting all this and not relying on Google.

For those of us who have multiple projects to visit, its good to know for billing purposes.

I honestly don't understand why personal location tracking is not a built-in feature of the modern mobile OS. I'd love to not even have to use a third-party app to work out where I was all week ...

But if it's valuable to you, then surely it's equally (if not more) valuable to unknown 3rd parties. /s

I'd love for it to track offline. Shouldn't be any technical requirement for being connected to Google or anyone.

My life is a mix of The Hangover parts 1 & 2 (but not at all like part 3) and very occasionally Dude Wheres My Car (/s?)

Just to chime in as well -- it was useful to me for time tracking, "remembering" when exactly was that one event or when we last were in that one place, and retrospectively tagging places I liked for future reference.

It's useful for figuring out when things happened, and for figuring out when I was last where, very occasionally for finding 'what did I do on a given day'.

My Google Maps location data was very handy for me when I applied for my residence card and the form asked which countries I had visited in the last four years with dates.

To add another example: I've used Google location data in the past to geotag vacation photos from my camera