It'd be awesome if I could import my Google Maps location history into something like this so I can stop giving them my GPS data forever. I just find it so damn useful, but I'd like to port it over, wipe it, and start on something privacy-respecting.
Suggestion: just start using something like this today (maybe in parallel with Google). In a few years, your Google location history will be less relevant, so importing it elsewhere will also feel less relevant.
When you want to migrate data, the trick is to first turn time on your side. As long as you keep using Google, you have time against you -- the longer you hold off on switching over, the longer you'll feel like you need to move the data over.
There's often something small one can do that changes the situation so that the passage of time doesn't make it worse anymore, but better. In this case, just starting to use something like this is it. Even if you continue to use Google at the same time.
I actually continue to use Google Maps for the opposite reason. The anonymous data aggregation across users is what powers features like traffic estimates and store busyness data.
Those are great to have, and I don't mind donating my information to keep them running.
As far as I know, owntracks doesn't actually store location history, it only defines a protocol for exchanging current location info between programs. If you're using their "official" recording server, writing a script to import history looks super easy [1].
My girlfriend was hiking near snowmass Colorado and wasn’t sure which path to take at one point. I opened google timeline, browsed back to 4 years before when I did the hike and told her to take a left.
I also regularly use google timeline and web history to figure out what I was doing a few months before when I hade a cryptic credit card charge for example.
I've had this (perhaps strange) thought where I am able to see my entire life traced out as my wanderings in two dimensions across the surface of this planet. Others too, for example co-workers I would come to know, girlfriends (ex-girlfriends as well as the one that would become my wife) and friends, relatives too would be traced — synchronized in time.
Watching the whole thing sped up and perhaps you begin to see life, or parts of your life anyway, as the humdrum of commuting, daily to and from the same job, same grocery stores, etc. — back and forth. Then punctuated occasionally, briefly, by a road trip, a trip abroad, or a permanent move to a new city (and new routines, cycles).
And then you get to see if there were ever tiny instants where you crossed paths, unknowingly, with a future wife/lover/coworker. Relatives who die: their traces drop off....
I know, I'm on a tangent here and this app was probably not designed as a tool for some sort of avant-garde pipe dream. But when you asked about why I would be interested in location data, that's what crosses my mind. :-)
Without going into much detail, I needed to write a personal statement talking about events that took place in the course of three years, and Google maps storing my locations by the minute was very helpful. Example: I traveled to city A between two dates, I know I flew there then drove back. I knew I went to this coffee shop at a specific hour and stayed there for 43 minutes... Etc
My only wish is if I was self hosting all this and not relying on Google.
For those of us who have multiple projects to visit, its good to know for billing purposes.
I honestly don't understand why personal location tracking is not a built-in feature of the modern mobile OS. I'd love to not even have to use a third-party app to work out where I was all week ...
Just to chime in as well -- it was useful to me for time tracking, "remembering" when exactly was that one event or when we last were in that one place, and retrospectively tagging places I liked for future reference.
It's useful for figuring out when things happened, and for figuring out when I was last where, very occasionally for finding 'what did I do on a given day'.
My Google Maps location data was very handy for me when I applied for my residence card and the form asked which countries I had visited in the last four years with dates.
