glimpse into the sharp rise

The data showed Google received 982 geofence warrants in 2018, then 8,396 geofence warrants in 2019, and 11,554 geofence warrants in 2020 — or about one-quarter of all the legal demands that Google received.

The disclosure, while limited, offered the first glimpse into the sharp rise in the number of these requests, but Google did not say how often the search giant pushes back against these legal demands for users’ location data — if at all.

News that Google will soon move its users’ location data to their devices was met with cautious praise.