I know many people use Google Maps “My Location” feature to get their location without GPS. Turns out Google has some big plans for this My Location. In their latest post on their Google Mobile blog they mention exactly how they get this location.
It turns out that they have been using us for months! Any phone using Google Maps with GPS was sending back the coordinates and CellID to Google for their location. Not that I care all that much but they could at least have asked…
Well its nice to see that they are giving back this information. They hope to soon provide this “My Location” feature for other developers to use in their 3rd party applications. In truth many developers can already do this with the opensource www.opencellid.org. Here is to more location aware applications!
Randy R. Not Registered
Posted: June 9, 2008 at 7:49 AM EST
LoL who cares its Google :-X. If Google didn’t tell us that they were using our location to get our location we wouldn’t have known, imagine who else uses our info.
DavidB Not Registered
Posted: June 9, 2008 at 7:59 AM EST
They DID tell us. It’s plainly there in the 2 point type terms and conditions. Typical “sneakwrap” as Ed Gibson over at InfoWorld would say.
Randy R. Not Registered
Posted: June 9, 2008 at 8:02 AM EST
One day thats going to get me in trouble I did read it, But never thought it was anything, they used that triangular method with cell towers. But like I said one day it will get me in trouble and stuff I hate terms and conditions. X-D