Same, been kicking myself since I found out it was all gone a few weeks ago. Don’t know why I didn’t make a ‘just in case’ backup / export.
Still infuriating they can just go “oops all gone”. It came through the roll-out fine, I remember looking stuff up in February. As far as I can tell it was a later unrelated glitch.
Google also accidentally deleted a random amount of user’s timeline data if you didn’t immediately catch it and restore from back up last March before the affected backups were overwritten. If you didn’t keep a close enough watch on your timeline to know that that happened, everything before ~Feb 2025 is gone now.
Ask me how I know. Yes I kept up on permissions. Yes I had backups on. No I didn’t have a new device. I even have dozens of available gigabytes of paid storage on Google One.
I’m sure it will only get more stable due to maps and timeline being revenue generators that encourage investment.
Incognito mode (Chrome) and Private mode (Safari/Firefox) and InPrivate Browsing (Edge/IE) have had disclaimers/explanations for years, Chrome just expanded the disclaimer after settling the suit. Unfortunately for them the judge didn’t know how the internet works any better than the plaintiffs. Winding back the odometer on a car doesn’t mean toll roads don’t know you drove there, it just means “you” have no record of it.
Opera / Vivaldi offer an integrated VPN, but they’re about the only ones other than stuff like the Tor Browser.