Computerworld's Preston Gralla is a little grumpy about AOL's and Skyhook Wireless' plans to "put together a massive, private database of 16 million Wi-Fi routers throughout the U.S. and Canada, including name and precise location."

The AOL Skyhook 'Near Me' AIM plug-in shows you who of your buddies is nearest to you, and as Gralla puts it, "Skyhook uses the massive Wi-Fi database as a kind of poor man's GPS system to triangulate buddy locations."

What worries Gralla is the potential future uses of that data. "Skyhook Wireless isn't spending all this money just so it can support an AOL plug-in," he writes. "Its ultimate goal, it says on its Web site, 'is to expand the market for Location-Based Services (LBS) by making precise location information accessible to users and application providers.'"

"In other words, the data will be made available to the highest bidder," Gralla writes.

More here from the AP ... more here from Slashdot ... and more here from InfoWorld.