Google Places API : Add Place Privacy

Question

With Places API, it provides the ability to add new places. How much are we sure that Google does not use these custom added places for their own marketing and research purposes. What if you want to keep these new places private to your applications. The Add Place section does not talk anything about this.

Does anybody have any information around Google privacy policy around adding new places?

Answer 1

As per the documentation:

By adding a place, you can supplement the data in the Google Maps database with data from your application. This allows you to:

Instantly update the data in Google's database for your users.

Submit new places to a moderation queue for addition to the Google places database.

This means that places added via the Places API are reviewed and, if approved, added to the global places database that is accessible for all users. They will not be kept private to your application.

UPDATE

The Place Add has been deprecated on June 30, 2017 and will stop working on June 30, 2018. So you cannot use this method anymore. For further details please refer to the corresponding geo blog post.