The data were aggregated and anonymized, so no customer information was connected to the data points. Talbott compared the information gathered for the project to the types of data you would be able to collect from cars passing through a toll booth. They could see the direction the cars were going, how many were passing through and at what time, but they couldn’t determine the type of car or who was driving.
Some of the simpler visualizations they came up with show how much data was being trafficked throughout the day and which way it was moving — either from a user in a specific country to one of the 18 regions around the world in which Google Cloud houses its data, or vice versa. In the image above, you can see what that looks like for four countries. The bubbles denote the size of the data packet, the arrows show which direction it was traveling and you can see how that information changes across a day. One important detail to note: The colors don’t actually mean anything. They’re only there are there to help viewers see some of the changes in the data.
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