Your location sharing just changed.

getty

While Google Chrome is under fire for “silently” installing a 4 GB AI model on more than a billion devices, it is also changing how it shares your location data with the websites you visit. While installing the local AI model has been attacked as a new privacy nightmare, Google’s latest location sharing stops an existing one.

Google’s latest AI furor was triggered by Alexander Hanff, in an article that slammed both the privacy and climate implications from this mass AI install. Google has been quick to respond that it’s been there a while and remains under user control, but the lack of overt transparency has caught them out again.

With some neat irony, just as this privacy cloud was building, Google announced that “approximate location sharing gives you more control over your location data in Chrome,” and that “on Chrome on Android, you can now choose to share your approximate location with websites, instead of sharing precise location.”

Some websites do need your precise location — and by precise, they really do mean precise, Google says, “if, for example, you’re placing a delivery order or trying to find the closest ATM to your office.” But other use cases "may only need your approximate location — like getting access to local weather and news.”

Google says this is now launching on Android and “we’ll be expanding this feature to desktop in the coming months.” It also says it wants to “encourage developers to review their location needs and only ask for precise location when it’s required.”

Yes, that means that desktop location sharing is still a privacy nightmare.

Forbes‘Turn It Off’—Google Starts Scanning Your Gmail As Update Goes LiveBy Zak Doffman

Location continues to be one of the most sensitive data types over-requested by apps on our devices, with most of those asking not really needing it. The sale of your location data as part of the “you’re the product” ecosystem that drives the free services and platforms we use continues to make headlines.

The change on Chrome is good — but the onus remains with users to take care when they give apps or websites permission to pinpoint their location. Whether that’s precise or approximate, it should only be given when needed.