Google has what it calls the Transparency Reports, where it demonstrates "how the policies and actions of governments and corporations affect privacy, security, and access to information online."
Among the list of reports, one is showing the impact of the war in Ukraine, and how it affects the way people use its products, including Google Maps.
And here, under the 'Traffic and disruptions to Google' report, the company that "provides near real-time information about traffic to and from products and services around the world," showed that usage of Google Maps in Ukraine has tripled during the war.
According to a Damian Menscher, a Google employee, Google users in Ukraine "shifted towards mapping evacuation plans."
Our users in Ukraine stopped working their day jobs 2 days ago, and instead shifted towards mapping evacuation plans. Explore large-scale user behavior changes for yourself at https://t.co/DYlhcXFbCJ pic.twitter.com/v21vfpRWyT
— Damian Menscher (@menscher) February 26, 2022
The charts give a representation of the ratio of that region’s request rate to the worldwide request rate.
For each time period and product, Google divides the traffic for each geographic region by total worldwide traffic, resulting in a number between 0 and 1. Then, Google multiplies all numbers by a constant, which normalizes but does not change the shape of the graphs.
And in the war between Russia and Ukraine, three times more people use Google Maps either to flee the country, or look for safer places to be.
Conversely, usage of the productivity apps, like Google Docs, have dropped by about three times in the same time period, in a reflection of how much citizens' daily lives have been impacted by Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, there is no significant change to the use of Google Search, YouTube, or Gmail.
