What does Google do with the data it collects?
Data enables us to provide our services like Search, Gmail, and Maps.
Make our services more useful
First and foremost, we use data to make our services faster, smarter, and more useful to you. For example, if you search for “coffee” from your mobile phone, location information from your phone can help us show you results for nearby cafés, not just an article about the history of coffee.
Learn more about how this works below.
Improve security
Data also powers many of our security features. Our Gmail spam filter, for instance, finds patterns across the kinds of emails people flag as spam, which enables us to protect you from spam and harmful emails. In fact: less than 1% of all the spam sent to Gmail ends up reaching your inbox.
Learn more about how we keep you safe online
Show relevant ads
We use certain information, such as the searches you have done and your location, to make the ads we show you more relevant and useful. Ads are what enable us to make our services like Search, Gmail, and Maps available for free for everyone. With our Ads Settings tool, you can control ads based on your interests and the searches you have done.
Learn more about how Google shows adsSee how we use data to improve your experience
By analyzing patterns across the data we collect, we give you more useful results and recommendations. And when you sign in with your Google Account, we can give you an even better experience.
Select an app to learn more.
Getting directions on the go
You can navigate the roads like a pro, even when you are on vacation in a new place. Our job is to get you from point A to point B as quickly and easily as possible, so you can get on with the rest of your plans. Google Maps has live traffic data in 60 countries and provides more than 1 billion kilometers worth of transit results every day.
By monitoring real-time traffic information, we can help you find the best route to your destination. Google Maps can tell there is heavy traffic when a lot of people are moving slowly along the same street.
Your current location is what allows us to understand where you are on your journey. We can then tell you the next step, and reroute you if a faster route becomes available.
You can easily manage the places you go at My Account.
If you are signed in, you can save places on Google Maps before you get to your destination, like your hotel, interesting attractions, and recommended restaurants. We save these places for you, so you can quickly find them again while on your trip. Your saved places are visible only to you.
Understanding what you mean when you type “Basalona”
When you search for something, you want the answer, not trillions of web pages to sort through. To answer more than 100 billion Google searches every month, we consider lots of factors — like how closely the words on a website match what you searched for and how up to date the website is.
You know when you search for something and you make a typo — and somehow Google knows what you meant anyway? Our spelling correction model uses the data from people who made the same mistake before and corrects it for you. (Fun fact: Barcelona is one of the most misspelled cities in the world.) This model also helps power spelling corrections in our other services.
If you have searched for “Barcelona flights” before, we might suggest this in the search box before you even finish typing it. Or if you are a fan of the football club and often search “Barcelona scores,” we might suggest that right away.
You can easily remove a past search query at My Account.
If you are signed in and a Barcelona football fanatic, the Google App can keep you updated on the score while they are playing - without you even having to ask.
Finding what videos to watch on YouTube
There are a lot of great videos out there. After all, people upload nearly 300 hours of video per minute to YouTube. We want to help you find the videos that will interest you most, and avoid the ones that will not.
We get cues about what is popular and trending based on what everyone is watching. This helps us suggest the latest and greatest videos across a variety of genres — like top music tracks, “how to” tutorials, and breaking news. So when you visit the home screen, you see the best of YouTube.
YouTube also recommends videos you may like based on videos you have watched before. If you are obsessed with watching covers of the theme song from “Frozen,” we can suggest more of them. Or if you are a gamer entertained by PewDiePie, we can suggest more of his videos (plus videos like them).
You can easily manage your YouTube history at My Account.
If you are signed in, you can subscribe to channels you discover as you browse, create playlists of your favorite “Frozen” theme song covers to watch with your friends, and even upload your own cover if you are so inspired.
We have easy-to-use tools to put you in control of the types of information we collect and use. Manage your settings at My Account
For more details about how Google uses information, please see the Privacy Policy.
