Google Maps reminds you of how many places you couldn’t visit this year due to the pandemic

Google is sending out their annual Map Timeline update via email right now and it’s a sad reminder of all of the places you couldn’t visit thanks to COVID. To be clear, it actually shows you all of the places you did visit this year, but you’ll notice that compared to last year, your timeline is probably looking pretty skimp.

You can see in the email how many cities and places you’ve visited, and even what types of locations they were. My most visited places were tagged shopping and food & drink, but that’s no surprise to anyone, right? Another section compiles how long and how far you’ve walked and driven a vehicle for each month of the year. Most people will notice that January and February, and maybe some of March are sky high, while the rest of the year just tanks on the graph thanks to stay at home orders and work from home culture.

Highlights of your top cities and locations visited populate the body of the email too, but that’s nothing special. What’s really kind of neat is that Google Maps has calculated the percentage of the world you’ve traveled. Apparently, I’ve only seen 9% of planet Earth – as if I weren’t depressed enough about waiting until my 30s to travel, Google’s got my back with a reminder.

To be fair, the top of the email states that the Maps timeline update is auto-generated and published and they acknowledge that COVID-19 has prevented everyone from fulfilling their dreams of seeing the world (in more or less words). So long as the rest of this year is nothing like the past 9 days, I’d say there’s hope yet – we’ll see, right?