This is tangential, or only a part, of the current tracking concern. But the accelerometer in my 2013 Nexus 7 died, perhaps after a relatively minor blow it took when I was taking it out of its storage space and mis-judged clearance. (Accelerometer death is a known issue for this model.)

That doesn't fix the GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth logging, nor the screen activity tracking, but it does "fix" the tracking of how I hold it, move it around my person, and so on.

Maybe we will be taking to deliberately, physically crippling our devices, to keep their overlords from "observing" our every moment and action. We already tape over our cameras...

In a more sane -- for me -- world, I'd have controls to turn this crap off. Not / no longer being very trusting, I'd have physical controls.

Instead, science fiction is again becoming reality, where we will seek out device and tech "gurus" to kill the malicious functionality in our "own" devices.

To put my point of view bluntly, this is going to be a never ending game of whack-a-mole. Even if someone documents how to cleanup your location history across all of Google’s properties/services/databases, nobody can guarantee that it’ll solve the problem forever — except Google.

And Google’s business model as well as response to this finding make it clear (at this point) that Google won’t “solve this” and won’t do anything to make this less confusing and easier.

This is not the first time that Google had been found collecting and storing location information contrary to its claims or its explanation in help pages. Every time someone does an exposé, certain things may change (in this case it did not).

The writing on the wall has been clear for a long time — if you don’t like Google tracking your location, stop using its products/services or at least avoid creating an account with Google. I’d guess that the latter is highly impractical for most people. “Choose your battles” is what can be said when there’s no hope.