Google to Report on Trends in Users’ Mobility to Help Governments Tackle Coronavirus

By Staff, Agencies

Google will utilize its troves of geo-location data to calculate and report user movement trends in 131 countries in a bid to help governments optimize their anti-coronavirus strategies, the company announced on its blog on Thursday.

The reports will be available starting Friday and, as the company vows, will not include any information that can be used to identify any individual users, instead using "aggregated, anonymized" data.

The company will focus on the number of visits to various public places, from parks and squares to grocery stores.

The idea behind it is to give local authorities an understanding of how rigorously social distancing and other regulations are being followed in specific areas and what open hours should be recommended for businesses.

"We hope these reports will help support decisions about how to manage the COVID-19 pandemic," Jen Fitzpatrick, who leads Google Maps, and the company's chief health officer Karen DeSalvo, said in the post.