Google Maps is the world's most used navigation app. It covers over 200 countries with satellite imagery, Street View, real-time traffic, and turn-by-turn directions. You can look up businesses, check opening hours, read reviews, and plan routes by car, bike, transit, or on foot. It works on Android, iOS, and the web.

Google Maps costs nothing to use. That is not generosity. Google makes money from ads, and your location data is one of the most valuable signals for its advertising engine. Every search, every route, every saved place feeds into a profile that Google uses to sell targeted ads.

The app collects your location even when running in the background. It builds a timeline of everywhere you go, tied to your Google account. That data is shared across all Google services. Google started moving location history to on-device storage in 2024, but your searches and route requests still pass through Google servers.

For EU users, the bigger question is where your data ends up. Google stores data primarily on US servers, which fall under US surveillance laws like the CLOUD Act. Google runs EU data centers too, but nothing guarantees your data stays within the EU.

Worth knowing

Google Maps is hard to match on coverage. No other mapping service has the same depth of Street View imagery, business data, or transit information. If you switch to an EU alternative, expect a smaller business database and less Street View in some regions. The upside is that EU alternatives like Organic Maps or Magic Earth do not track your movements or feed your location into an advertising network.