I accidentally left mobile data active on my Android phone for several days. When I noticed it had been left on, and wifi disabled, I wasn’t too worried about how much data it might have used during that period, because the primary thing I happened to be doing with that phone was downloading and listening to podcasts. I might have done a bit of websurfing and a couple google searches and watched a youtube video or two, but I certainly didn’t think I was using Google searches to the point where I ended up using a whopping 2.75 GB of data for the first 9 days of April. That’s what the phone logged as the usage from the app named just “Google.” During that same period Google Podcasts used 195 KB, Chrome used 7 MB, Other apps from Google all had similarly small amounts listed.
So what is the Google app doing that makes it such a huge data hog? How do I stop it? That’s some serious usage that I don’t even want to be pulling over the wifi connection when it’s active for no good reason if I can avoid it.
BTW, the usage info is split into foreground and background use, and for the Google app, every single bit of that 2.75 GB was foreground.
What is the app ‘google’? I have several google apps from Apple’s (jailed) eco-system but IIRC none are names just Google. Maybe there is but I can’t find my phone right now so can’t check.
What comes to mind is Google Photos making a backup of you album - that is one that I need to watch when I travel outside my unlimited plan and turn cell data off. It can use a lot of data.
I assume the one named just “Google” is the app for that search bar on my phone’s main menu screen where I can type my searches directly into without opening Chrome, but I don’t know for sure. All the other apps on my phone that I recognize as coming from Google-the-company have their own separate properly named lines in the usage data.
ETA: I’ve taken a grand total of one photo on this phone, and I used the phone’s own native app to do it (It’s a Samsung Note 9) and I’ve never opened the Google Photos app. There’s no line for Google Photos in the usage data.
Do you have a separate line for Google Play? That would be my next guess. All apps updating through Google Play and showing up as “Google” on your phone?
No, as I said, all the apps that are easily identifiable as coming from Google-the-company have separate entries in the usage. That includes Google Play, Maps, Gmail, Youtube, Chrome.
My older android phone doesn’t split out usage, and I’m now wishing it does so I can see if the same sort of sneaky stupidity is happening there too. But it’s a discontinued LG and there won’t be any OS upgrades for it, ever. I’m glad I hardly ever used mobile data with it.
I listened to more stored podcasts from before this period than I actually downloaded new ones. Even if they had all been new ones, those files cannot possibly account for that huge 2.7 GB figure.
I would expect updates would get listed under Google Play Store or Google Play Services, which show about 50 MB each during the period.
If my podcast downloading and other things are hidden inside this giant “Google” category that’s a major issue with the accounting system for anybody figuring out which app is blowing their data budget. I hope it isn’t true.
I think there’s at least a decent chance of that because even if you downloaded a single one hour podcast at a 128 KB bit rate you’re looking at about 60 MB of data. 195 KB just doesn’t compute.
Maybe do a quick test and turn off the wifi and download some podcasts (or do an update) and see which numbers change.