Google has announced the rollout of new tools for some of its most popular apps including Google Maps, YouTube and Google Assistant, to allay privacy concerns among users. Google Maps will now have an incognito mode that will make sure that a user’s movement is not recorded once the mode is activated, or Google doesn’t track search queries on Maps. Users can activate the incognito mode from the menu that appears when one taps on his/her profile photo in Maps. The feature will be launched this month on Android, but no date has been announced for the iOS rollout yet.
“When you turn on incognito mode in Maps, your Maps activity on that device, like the places you search for, won’t be saved to your Google Account and won’t be used to personalize your Maps experience,” Google’s Eric Miraglia wrote in a blog post.
Meanwhile, YouTube users will now be able to auto-delete their search and viewing history. Users can set a particular time period for which they want to keep the YouTube history available, after which it will be deleted automatically. “Set the time period to keep your data, 3 months, 18 months, or until you delete it, just like Location History and Web and App Activity — and we’ll take care of the rest,” Miraglia wrote.
And lastly, for Google Assistant, users will soon be able to delete their voice histories from the artificial intelligence system by simply using a voice command. One just needs to say: “Hey Google, delete the last thing I said to you”, or “Delete everything I said to you last week” and the data will be erased. However, voice command can’t be used for deleting voice history further back than a week. For that, users will have to visit the Assistant’s settings menu.
Google informed that the voice commands for deleting Assistant data will roll out for English language users this week, and for all other languages by next month. Google will also be launching a new feature called ‘Password Checkup’ that will tell users if their passwords are weak, whether they have been used across multiple sites or if they seem to be compromised.
Keywords: Google, Maps, Youtube, Google Assistant, Incognito
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