A few months ago, I went to Munich for the annual general meeting of Democrats Abroad Germany. I got to visit my friends Ryder and Andrew, see some of the other activists and volunteers from all over Germany, and of course, try out a few new restaurants.
Saturday evening, since I didn't sign up for official dinner and speaker part of the meeting, I was on my own for food. Ryder and Andrew were having dinner with friends, so I thought I'd try to meet up with them. I put in the location of the restaurant to see how hard it would be to get there
What Google Maps showed me
It's true, I am neutral about vegan and vegetarian food! I hardly ever go to explicitly veggie restaurants, so I guess I hardly ever type them into Google Maps to plan how I'm getting there. I probably do have a 58% chance of being really excited about eating there. I am very curious about what "activity across Google products" indicates my preferences. It turns out, I turned off my Location History a long time ago, because I didn't want Google automatically knowing where I've been based on my GPS coordinates. There are 21 locations over the past couple years where it seems I must have clicked to confirm when Google Maps asked "are you here now?". They're fairly random, so not sure if there's a large enough data set to predict my lukewarm feelings about Soy Vegan in Munich.
It turns out that I got delayed and couldn't make it to the restaurant in time to eat with them anyway, so that difficult choice was thankfully taken out of my hands.
What I ended up eating instead
I don't recall whether I found it on Google Maps or on Foursquare, but I ended up at no-frills place called "Zum Koreaner" near the university.