Given that Apple and Google are both tech companies it was probably just a (say) python script to get that kind of thing going. For google especially the data and being able to iterate is how they keep their edge.

Thats a really bad justification, if their edge depends on spying they shouldn’t exist

I'm not justifying but rather indicating that the above comment is misunderstanding the situation

The specifics around this matter hugely.

Neither Google nor Apple sell your location data. Other ad providers will.

This matters a lot but is ignored by comments like this.

Lol if you believe them…

Burr regardless, the point was government has it.

It’s also safe to assume 3rd party apps track it and capture the same data. Which can then be purchased.

Well selling that data is completely against their business model!

For example Google's entire revenue model is based on the idea you give them money and ads to show and they choose where best to show that. If they sold the raw data it would undermine that.

Basically no amount of money would be enough for Google to give away their entire business.

I'm sure they would be happy to sell data provided the person purchasing the data would not be in the ad space.

For example, if the government says, "here's $10B dollars / year" give us that data and we wont use it in ads. Google doesn't have a business incentive not to provide it the data.

> you’re tracked 24/7 and everything’s recorded imo

If you have Android, open Google maps, open menu, select "Your Timeline", and scroll through days.

I did this and was greeted with a prompt explaining said functionality and asking if I wanted to "Turn it on". There was another button beneath it with the option to "Skip". I clicked Skip to see what happens and all location info for every day I checked was empty ("No visits for this day").

So looks like this functionality is disabled by default. I don't recall ever using google maps on my phone before, let alone tweaking specific settings.

This can be disabled, although who knows if it's just hidden for you.