Why does Google think I’m at Barnard Castle?

In fact, I am 416 kilometres away from Barnard Castle, as the crow flies, or about 500km by road. Granted, I very seldom use Google as a search engine. I use privacy-aware searches instead such as DuckDuckGo. I have also been to great lengths to prise my rooted smartphone from Google’s clutches too. But my PC connects via a permanent IP address that hasn’t moved location for 8 years! Last time I personally went anywhere near Barnard Castle was back in 2001.

I honestly haven’t made this up. This is a full-screen grab, unedited, captured 13:42 UTC today. What is going on here? Some elaborate new defence for Cummings, i.e. “I wasn’t really there, Google got it wrong“, perhaps? 🙂

In any event, let’s hope and pray that Google’s coronavirus tracking app is a little more accurate than this, eh? 🙂