fortunately they are just changing defaults. I worried i was losing all my location history, but just checked and it's still set to never delete.

I came here to write this exact comment but you beat me to it. They have just figured out that 18 months of your data is all they need to make you a monetisable product.

a very good point and something that will never discussed as it gets into threatening Google's core business.

This is meant to be PR statements to try and prepare for increased scrutiny and data privacy they see on the horizon.

This is, imo, meant to be a way for them to tell the masses "look we automatically delete you data!", expecting them to not have any understanding of models that can be built from the underlying data.

Unfortunately, the tech press will cover this at face value praising Google, as their livlihoods are all dependent on Google Ads / YT and free services like AMP.

Good point. Maybe it means "only we can see this data from now on, instead of the user, and/or our contractors and partners"

You can.

https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity It's on the hamburger menu