Recently, many users on social media have complained about their timeline data suddenly disappearing from Google Maps. This has garnered significant attention and prompted a response from the company. Google confirmed that due to a technical issue, some users' timeline records were indeed deleted and may not be recoverable under certain circumstances.

Genevieve Park, spokesperson for Google stated: "We experienced a brief technical problem which led to the deletion of timelines data in some cases."

According to Google's statement, only those who had enabled cloud backup could restore their timeline data. Recently, the company has shifted towards storing time-axis data on devices rather than defaulting it as an active feature within the Google Maps application; users must manually enable this function under 'Your Timeline' settings.

This incident resulted in some losing years of location history despite a few having backups activated prior to the issue and successfully recovering their timeline records. Other Reddit posters reported that even after importing backup data, they were unable to fully restore all information lost during the glitch period.
Google had previously warned users last summer about transitioning towards device storage for Google Maps' position data as an alternative method of tracking location history without relying on Google servers—beneficial from a privacy standpoint but also carrying risks such as sudden loss of records. Although Google Maps allows exporting location historical data into files, there is no clear guidance provided by the company regarding how to re-import this information in cases not involving cloud backup server restoration.

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