Google Knows Where You Are (And Where You’ve Been)
Google today announced the launch of version 2.0 of Google Maps for Mobile with the addition of the company's My Location technology, which uses cell tower IDs to triangulate a user's approximate location.
According to eWeek's Clint Boulton, the company is doing its best to assuage users' privacy concerns regarding the information gathered. "The company said My Location does not gather any personally identifiable information or associate any location data with personally identifiable information," he writes. "Moreover, the feature can be disabled by anyone who prefers not to use it."
InformationWeek's Eric Zeman tested it, and he was impressed. "It worked very fast," he writes. "It generated a locator dot on the satellite image of New York City almost immediately. Sure, GPS would have been more accurate, but two blocks off isn't a big deal."
More here from Red Herring … more here from the New York Times … more here from SlipperyBrick … more here from CNET News … more here from the AP … and the press release is here.