- Aug 2020: "Starting today", if the accelerometer shows a trace that "may be an earthquake, it sends a signal to our earthquake detection server, along with a coarse location". "we’ll use this technology to share a fast, accurate view of the impacted area on Google Search". Alerts were additionally issued in part of the USA based on government data --https://blog.google/products/android/earthquake-detection-an...
- Mar 2022: up to three USA states now with government data, rest of the world gets alerts based on crowdsourced data. Article mentions "2+billion Android phones in use around the world" (I take that to mean "2.1 billion Google Play Services devices"). If the quake is expected to be heavy, it "Will break through Do Not Disturb settings, turn on your screen and play a loud sound" --https://crisisresponse.google/android-alerts/
- Jul 2025 (this submission): nothing seems to have changed (still govt data for the same subset of the USA), but some stats on how it's going and that accuracy is improving. It notes that, to receive alerts, users must have "location settings enabled"¹ (and internet of course). About 1/3rd of the alerts are true positives that are also received before the shaking, but 85% of people found it 5/5 very helpful
¹ This confuses me. Surely Google doesn't get your location every ~10 seconds to know whether to send your device an alert; that's too battery-draining. Maybe it sends your location a few times per day~hour and they'll just use that? Because the alternative option, if the server sends "earthquake in {geojson polygon}" to all devices, the OS could just check your (last known) location without having to care about whether you want to provide location info to apps. I have the user-level location setting turned off whenever I'm not routing/mapping because why'd I want GNSS to be running... well, for this apparently, but it never told me this
There is also the Earthquake Network (EQN) app that works on very similar principals to Google’s system - phones monitor their MEMs accelerometers, when they are left charging with their screen off, and when enough neighbouring phones detect vibrations simultaneously an earthquake is detected and apps nearby are alerted. It’s been running since 2012.
> Surely Google doesn't get your location every ~10 seconds to know whether to send your device an alert; that's too battery-draining. Maybe it sends your location a few times per day~hour and they'll just use that?
Why not?
You can use router IP address for location and WiFi to send. Minimal power consumption.
Then you don't need location services on. That only gatekeeps WiFi and Bluetooth scan results as well as GNSS. It doesn't gatekeep Internet access so they always get your IP when you talk to the server
Sadly my IP is routinely from the wrong country and I don't use a VPN
- Feb 2016: third-party app starts doing it, so you had to go out of your way to install it but it may hit critical mass at some point. This is probably what I was thinking of --https://earthquakes.berkeley.edu/blog/2016/02/11/seismic-sen...
- Aug 2020: "Starting today", if the accelerometer shows a trace that "may be an earthquake, it sends a signal to our earthquake detection server, along with a coarse location". "we’ll use this technology to share a fast, accurate view of the impacted area on Google Search". Alerts were additionally issued in part of the USA based on government data --https://blog.google/products/android/earthquake-detection-an...
- Mar 2022: up to three USA states now with government data, rest of the world gets alerts based on crowdsourced data. Article mentions "2+billion Android phones in use around the world" (I take that to mean "2.1 billion Google Play Services devices"). If the quake is expected to be heavy, it "Will break through Do Not Disturb settings, turn on your screen and play a loud sound" --https://crisisresponse.google/android-alerts/
- Jul 2025 (this submission): nothing seems to have changed (still govt data for the same subset of the USA), but some stats on how it's going and that accuracy is improving. It notes that, to receive alerts, users must have "location settings enabled"¹ (and internet of course). About 1/3rd of the alerts are true positives that are also received before the shaking, but 85% of people found it 5/5 very helpful
¹ This confuses me. Surely Google doesn't get your location every ~10 seconds to know whether to send your device an alert; that's too battery-draining. Maybe it sends your location a few times per day~hour and they'll just use that? Because the alternative option, if the server sends "earthquake in {geojson polygon}" to all devices, the OS could just check your (last known) location without having to care about whether you want to provide location info to apps. I have the user-level location setting turned off whenever I'm not routing/mapping because why'd I want GNSS to be running... well, for this apparently, but it never told me this