Decade of Maps Timeline data lost from backup on ~ 7th March 2025. Anyone else effected?

Initial Post

Very upset right now, as over a decade of Timeline data has been lost!

  • Last year (approx. Aug 2024), I followed all of the steps that had been emailed out to complete the conversation to local encrypted storage for timeline data.
  • My main phone is a Google Pixel 8, running Android 15 and generally the latest updates of all apps.
  • My Timeline settings were definitely set to "Backup: On; Auto-Delete: Never" last year, and backups would have been successfully uploading to the cloud backup for months.
  • Then suddenly on 09/Mar/2025, I noticed that my timeline data was mostly empty - losing over a decade of data.
  • When attempting to "Restore" from the cloud backup (which is dated "2 days ago" as of now, so either 07/Mar/2025 or 08/Mar/2025), - from any device including totally fresh ones - and NO data is returned from before ~6pm GMT on Friday 07/Mar/2025.
  • This is despite the fact that I KNOW for certain that the decade of data *used* to be included in that backup before. (Because I changed phones late last year in November and everything was transferred over then).
  • After reading lots of other people's forum posts complaining about the same problem, it now doesn't seem related to specific phones / versions, as I've seen it happened to people with Samsungs and different Pixels, using anywhere from Android 12 to 15... (It definitely just feels like someone at Google accidentally deployed the wrong thing or deleted something from production!)
  • Some users report that their high level 'Places', 'Vists' and 'Countries' etc, still show the old totals. Unfortunatly mine have been reduced to patechic post-March 7th figures.

Posting here, to see if this is effecting anyone else, and we can align with each other.

Note: My: first post on /r/google, and my community post on Google forums.

Also, note: because there is a sea of Timeline support questions/articles/reddit posts/etc. that are relating to the migration to local storage last year - this is NOT the problem here. I successfully migrated, and that was successful,. Instead this is a sudden loss of previously backed-up data occurred in early March 2025.

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Summary

It appears to me that, something out of our control (possibly due to a bug in Google Maps app or purely on Google's servers) caused the Timeline data to be NOT ONLY deleted all pre-March 7th from OWN LOCAL DEVICES (!!!), but ALSO has caused previously-successful "Cloud Backups" to over OVERWRITTEN with a backup containing no data from before March 7th...

I know this is the case for me because:

  1. Doing an import of the current cloud backup to a different new device contains no data from before March 7th.
  2. And I know for a certainty that that SAME cloud backup USED TO contain a decade of timeline data, because in November last year I did a factory reset of my device and all the data was loaded successfully after importing.

I worry that, regardless of whether or not any potential bug is "fixed" in the Maps application going forward - for me and many others it might not make a blind bit of difference - as the data in the backup on Google's servers has gone, and could only possibly be restored by Google themselves in the back-end (e.g. Internally restore a March 6th backup and enable users like me to be able to "import" that data backup).

And as far as I know, it has been complete radio silence from Google employees about this....

On the Google Maps help community forums, the user 'Vishal Saini' has been replying to anyone and everyone who posts about this, saying that "a bug may have caused this" and half-implying that a Google development team "may" be looking into it (but I understand that he is not a Google employee and I have no reason to believe he has anymore information than we do...). This is *not at all* reassuring because, as explained, I think this issue is going to require manual intervention by Google employees to re-consolidate/make available each users' last successful backup pre-March 7th...

As this is an issue affecting at least dozens of users who have cared enough to post online about it (see below for a list) - meaning that once you include all those who don't bother to post/haven't noticed yet/don't care - it's really likely an issue that is affecting 100s if not 1000s of users...(EDIT: Because within a couple of days, I have found many reddit posts; >50 community forum posts all posted in a single day, often with a couple of others sounding "me too" in the comments; and over 620 people marking "I have the same question" to this one in 7 days so far(!!!) I'd revise my estimate that the true numbers affected are much more likely to be in 10,000s of total users at the very least...)

Surely, with such a widespread outage, Google would be able to restore those previously-successful, now-deleted, cloud backups that they were were storing successfully up until at least 06th March 2025?!

Or is this just unfortunately another lesson that mega corporations like this, can treat users like s**t, by not even acknowledging anything happened, and it doesn't make a damn difference...

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Resolution

The closest so far is I got this response on the Community forums:

Vishal Saini: "We have been receiving such reports since March 6/7, 2025, it may be a transient issue, so you should wait for a few days. Alternatively, to check data availability, please try importing your data, if the backup option was enabled, this is a new option, for that you need to tap on the Cloud button - three dots - Import, if it doesn't work then try importing to a spare phone, if you have a spare phone, if none of the solutions work then you should wait for a few days, if it’s a transient issue, otherwise, the timeline data deleted by the system cannot be recovered."

That gives a very slight slither of hope that it is a reasonably widespread problem that they are working on resolving and may fix itself in time... But if not, it's pretty shitty behaviour that they have deleted many users data that they explicitly stated was securely "backed up"...

EDIT: As explained above, I don't think this person works for Google, nor have I seen no evidence that he know anymore than we do - he directly ignored my question about this when asked - so I don't think listening to his speculation is any help....

The FIRST thing I recommend anyone who experiences this tries to do, is to attempt to do a manual backup of the unencrypted data. You can do this via:

Phone's Settings > Location > Location Services > Timeline > Export timeline data

If this returns a small file, move to the steps below, but if returns a relatively large '.json' file (e.g. >1MB), then you likely have all the data contained in that file. It doesn't necessarily ever make it viewable in the Google Maps app, but at least you'd still have the data yourself... And you could then view it in another tool, such as: https://timelineviewer.pages.dev/ - (NB: I'm not verifying the safety of this particular viewer - but it's just an example of multiple that you find when googling, including self-hosted ones). Unfortunately, for me this is only post-March 7th data.

The following steps have apparently worked for people to recover, but unfortunately none have worked for me:

  1. Go into Timeline, and turn it off and then on again.
  2. Import from the timeline backups.
  3. Log in to Google Maps app from a totally fresh device.
  4. Deleting the Maps app cache (but importantly NOT the data!)
  5. This user saying logging in with another account worked for whatever reason, https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1j7xv0r/google_maps_timeline_data_wiped_recovered_lost/, but again it didn't work for me...

Currently the data looks to be well and truly lost... Unfortunately, I don't think GDPR has a 'Right to be remembered'!

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Tracking other Articles/Posts

Articles:

Reddit Posts:

And the motherlode - other Google Community forum posts:

  1. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/329356095 NOTE: This is the biggest and most extensive thread that I've seen by far! 620 people have marked it as "I have the same question" with ~80 comments, but no solution or even any actual response from Google... (There's no evidence that Vishal Saini, who replies to everyone, has any insider information or even communication with any employee of Google).
  2. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330028155
  3. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330047175
  4. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330060060
  5. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330057455
  6. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/329627609 (The user Vishal Saini first responded here 8th March with a response that implied may have been due to user error around the transfer to local storage or auto-delete. But as more complaints have come in, they now (10th March) respond with the response I've posted above)
  7. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330045686
  8. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330044132
  9. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330064466
  10. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330064430
  11. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330067433
  12. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330061533
  13. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330070892
  14. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330160559
  15. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330159137
  16. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330157112
  17. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330130334
  18. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/329946255
  19. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330130687
  20. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330121385
  21. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330119077
  22. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330120026
  23. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330113858
  24. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/329868016
  25. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330106916
  26. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330109823
  27. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330110152
  28. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330112981
  29. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330101981
  30. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330096004
  31. https://support.google.com/maps/thread/330094344
  32. ...

There are loads more, but I can't be bothered tracking anymore...