Google has launched a service called My Location, and it could be a huge breakthrough in mobile mapping technology. My Location is available at no cost to those who use Google Maps on a mobile device, but don’t have GPS capabilities built-in. Technicalities aside, it uses cell towers to approximate the location of the user so that it is easier to find out where you are headed.
Naturally this is not going to be as accurate as GPS, but they say that it will get you within 1,000 meters (a little over 1/2 mile) on average. That does sound like an awful large variation, but for not being triangulated through a GPS receiver it’s actually rather good.
Sounds pretty cool, huh? Here’s a video demonstration that Google put together to show how it works:
This would be a great addition to the iPhone, and I’m sure iPhone owners will start pushing Apple to integrate this into the already powerful Google Maps application that comes with the device. It might not be perfect, but it’s better than having nothing, right?
And since privacy is always a big issue Google assures us that they are not storing any of our information, and that they don’t even see the name or phone number associated with a device. Who knows though … this could just be one more step in Google’s evil plot to take over the world quest to provide users with wonderful, yet free services.
My Location Press Release [via jkOnTheRun & Google OS]
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Tags: Google, Applications, Google Maps, GPS, How To, Maps, Portable Application, Videos
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Wow, that does sound very innovative. Google’s on a roll!
Their map service is actually becoming one of my favorite services of theirs.
MS has a similar app called Microsoft Location Finder ([microsoft.com] but it’s for PCs and uses Wi-Fi to find location instead of cell towers.
I’m not sure if finding a user’s location on a laptop would be as helpful as Google’s implementation, but this makes me wonder why Microsoft hasn’t put something like that on Pocket PC’s and Smart Phones.