Google's Find Hub tracking network still doesn't work properly two years after launch, but the company continues harvesting location data from hundreds of millions of Android phones — an invasive surveillance apparatus that fails at its one advertised job while quietly collecting your movements.
The stake for ordinary Americans is straightforward: Google convinced Android users to opt into a device-tracking network sold as a convenience, then crippled the feature so it can't reliably find your keys, all while keeping the data pipeline wide open. You get the surveillance. You don't get the service.
9to5Google, a tech outlet generally sympathetic to Google's ecosystem, laid out the failure in blunt terms. The Find Hub network — originally called "Find My Device" — launched with a default setting that restricted tracking to "high-traffic areas only," meaning anywhere that wasn't a major metro or travel hub was effectively cut off. Google defended this as a "first-of-its-kind safety protection." 9to5Google's reviewer wasn't buying it: "I'd argue it hindered the network into a state of inefficacy."
The result is a network where Samsung's — limited solely to Galaxy phones — somehow outperforms Google's, which runs on billions of Android devices worldwide. Find Hub trackers "should"t be just as good as AirTags," 9to5Google reported. "They're just not."
Google has started pushing users toward the "all areas" setting during new device setup, but 9to5Google notes the rollout has been inconsistent and still "requires millions of users to upgrade their devices" — in a market where fewer people are upgrading phones. The new Pixel Tag hardware, which 9to5Google nonetheless branded the "gold standard" for Find Hub trackers, amounts to what the outlet itself called "a Band-Aid." UWB precision finding doesn't fix a broken network.
Here's the part the tech press won't say out loud: Google's privacy-first default was never really about protecting you. It was about managing liability around stalking and harassment claims — the same kind of institutional butt-covering that lets the company keep the location data flowing while hobbling the feature you actually wanted. The network doesn't work because Google prioritized legal risk over product function. But the data collection? That never got the "high-traffic areas" restriction. Your phone still talks to Google's servers either way.
This is the Big Tech bargain in miniature. They sell you a tracking feature. They break the tracking. They keep the tracking of you.
The question that matters: if Find Hub can't find your stuff, what exactly is Google doing with all that location data — and who decided a broken product was an acceptable trade for keeping the pipeline open?
