Why YSK: Because you deserve to have peace of mind. Your privacy can mean your safety. I found out about this today, and in this comment I mentioned it and said I would make something more detailed.
I bet you heard that Google tracks you, as have I. But it's insanely daunting to see every movement, app and thing you have interacted with on your device for the last 8 years just laid out in front of you neatly. When you add your google account on your phone(or any device), it tracks this, with a timestamp, including:
-any app you used(including Contacts, Calendar, Phone, and when you pressed your home screen button-it is regarded as Samsung UI Home etc.)
-apps you viewed on google play
-map area on maps(you don't even have to search a specific place in order for it to get logged)
-if you called a place from maps(if you press the call button from maps to call a place and make a reservation, for example)
-images you saw and searched for on your browser
-location, video and voice notes and more
It is mentioned that if you log in on another device, it can keep track of this on that device as well.
#What can you do?
The first thing you can do is turn it off. Log on your google account, press the icon on the top right, then press on "Manage your Google Account". On the left side you will see a panel, choose "Data and privacy", and scroll on the center of the screen to see History settings, and press on My activity. You can choose to turn it off if you want. Make sure to stroll around to manage your advertisement settings, location settings, subscriptions and so on.
I also recommend switch to Proton Mail if you can.
I assume most people here probably already know this, but I just wanted to pass this along for awareness purposes. I knew that I wanted to have random stats at the end of my life to like, review and read, but not like this.
OsmAnd has 10 million downloads counted on Google play
Going bases off those numbers alone, Google maps reportedly has 10 billion downloads. So OsmAnd has 0.1% the users google maps does (extremely rough estimates).
All Google apps download numbers are useless as they count every single Android phone ever sold. Never compare them.
OsmAnd is great, that just means those are the 0.1% of users who are smart.
It's great for road trips because you can pre-download any maps you want, and do full GPS navigation without any cell phone or Internet service at all.
So you get all that without the tracking and selling of your data, for free
Osmand user checking in 👋
Also great for planning routes, and as a bike computer with built in trip recorder and OSD. Really detailed layers make it super useful for navigating inside malls and transport hubs too!
There are occasionally times that I may want to use Gmaps for some preliminary travel research though, and for that a private mobile tab works just fine.
I mean, Google also has the download maps feature. You can download a specific trip or an entire area. Obviously with trackers, but it doesn't have a leg up on gmaps
OsmAnd is great, that just means those are the 0.1% of users who are smart.
It's great for road trips because you can pre-download any maps you want, and do full GPS navigation without any cell phone or Internet service at all.
So you get all that without the tracking and selling of your data, for free