As an interesting thought exercise, let’s take a look at how Google can potentially use Android to further drive their other services and make great profit. It’s highly unlikely push ads will ever be used as most users are completely against them, and Google’s own Play Store policies forbid them.

This article doesn’t aim to predict what exactly Google may or may not do, but the potential discussed is technologically within reach. Putting some of the data together as described here won’t be an easy task, but it’s not a wild suggestion either. Without giving spoilers, we’re already seeing relevant technologies being used in existing Google apps and services.

What Google Knows…

Google knows a lot about you, unless you’ve taken drastic measures to make sure it doesn’t (if you’re interested in going that route, Pulser_G2 has written a series of articles that should help you get started). Even if you did, though, we can agree that Google knows a lot about the average user, who makes up the majority of Android users.

It’s also worth noting that most of these options either require the user to opt-in, or let the user know what’s happening. Google also recently launched a privacy and security hub to let users easily know about the information that’s being collected, and offer a portal from which to review their privacy settings.

That being said, the opt-in dialog may not be adamantly clear about what information is being collected to some users. With all that in mind: what exactly does Google know?

Where you go : when you open Google Maps for the first time, a dialog asks you to enable location reporting and location history in order to use the app and have it know where you are. You can later disable the latter (or both), but we’re going to make one assumption throughout this article, and it seems like a safe assumption: most users won’t. This allows Google to provide you with contextual information such as commute durations and traffic on routes you commonly take. If you’re curious, you can check your location history here.

: when you open Google Maps for the first time, a dialog asks you to enable location reporting and location history in order to use the app and have it know where you are. You can later disable the latter (or both), but we’re going to make one assumption throughout this article, and it seems like a safe assumption: most users won’t. This allows Google to provide you with contextual information such as commute durations and traffic on routes you commonly take. If you’re curious, you can check your location history here. What you search for and the results you click on : Google Web History is enabled by default and stores your search history. Additionally, links you click from Google Search (and some other Google websites/applications, such as Hangouts or the Google Play Store) will go through Google’s servers first, essentially tracking your clicks. The latter can’t be circumvented without using browser add-ons, an Xposed module or app.

: Google Web History is enabled by default and stores your search history. Additionally, links you click from Google Search (and some other Google websites/applications, such as Hangouts or the Google Play Store) will go through Google’s servers first, essentially tracking your clicks. The latter can’t be circumvented without using browser add-ons, an Xposed module or app. Websites you visit : in addition to the above, if you’re using Chrome and have Chrome Sync enabled, your web history will be stored by Google. This information is used to give you smarter results (for example, searching for “Python” will give you results related to the scripting language instead of the snake depending on your previous search and web history). You can review your web history and more here.

: in addition to the above, if you’re using Chrome and have Chrome Sync enabled, your web history will be stored by Google. This information is used to give you smarter results (for example, searching for “Python” will give you results related to the scripting language instead of the snake depending on your previous search and web history). You can review your web history and more here. Your interests : location related habits (via Maps and location services), videos and movies you like (YouTube, Google Play Movies), books you read (Google Play Books), music you listen to (Google Play Music), news you’re interested in (Newsstand), applications you use and love (installed apps and ratings), websites and subscriptions (from the emails you receive on Gmail and websites that sign-in using your Google+ account), travels and purchases (via Gmail) and more. Search/web history and click tracking can also provide more information about the above, as well as Google+ (potentially for social activities as well) depending on whether you use that or not.

: location related habits (via Maps and location services), videos and movies you like (YouTube, Google Play Movies), books you read (Google Play Books), music you listen to (Google Play Music), news you’re interested in (Newsstand), applications you use and love (installed apps and ratings), websites and subscriptions (from the emails you receive on Gmail and websites that sign-in using your Google+ account), travels and purchases (via Gmail) and more. Search/web history and click tracking can also provide more information about the above, as well as Google+ (potentially for social activities as well) depending on whether you use that or not. Your contacts : if you use Google Contacts Sync or Hangouts, they’re synced to Google’s servers (as you probably guessed from the name). You can view and manage those from the Google Contacts website, by the way.

: if you use Google Contacts Sync or Hangouts, they’re synced to Google’s servers (as you probably guessed from the name). You can view and manage those from the Google Contacts website, by the way. Things you photograph : Google Photos‘ image recognition technology is still far from perfect, but it’s interesting to see where it’s headed. Photographs’ contents can be more accurately recognized in the future, further identifying users’ interests. Geotagging already allows associating an image with the location where it was taken from.

: Google Photos‘ image recognition technology is still far from perfect, but it’s interesting to see where it’s headed. Photographs’ contents can be more accurately recognized in the future, further identifying users’ interests. Geotagging already allows associating an image with the location where it was taken from. Your appointments, birthdays and more : Google Calendar and Google Keep are great tools, and all that information is synced to Google’s servers as well, allowing you to access it from multiple devices.

: Google Calendar and Google Keep are great tools, and all that information is synced to Google’s servers as well, allowing you to access it from multiple devices. Various information from non-Google apps: Play Services and the upcoming Now on Tap will also open up some new and interesting possibilities.

It’s also important to remember just how many people most of this affects, and how much information this translates to. If you recall the recent EU antitrust lawsuit against Google, one of the issues is that Google dominates web searches in Europe, with a hold of 90% of users. Ignoring web services, Android alone shipped over a billion devices in 2014. Google apps come pre-installed on most of them too, possibly giving Google a much wider reach than other popular services such as Facebook, even though it may seem like the other way around if you only consider what you manually share (comments you personally write).