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So you didn't read TFA ? (Of course not).

It is trying to build a public (or so it says) database of where there is cell towers and or wifi, all geolocated by GPS.

Skyhook already has their database, mostly of wifi addresses volunteered.
Google has their database, which they jump started with Street View cars, but now keep up to date with a bazillion android phones running around.
WiggleWIFI has their wifi only database, collected by volunteers, which is public and massive, but not all that usable, although you can probably zoom into your neighborhood and find Wifi routers by the dozen.

But this database is supposed to be available publicly, and will know that if you are connected to Cell Tower XYZ, and your phone can see tower RWC, then you must be located in this particular grid square. Nobody but the cell companies have that data.

This project aims at collecting those tower locations, and wifi locations.

If you don't want to participate, then don't install the app on your smartphone.

But be aware the maps exist already, in a number of disjoint databases. This one hopes to make it a joint one, and a public one. They are late to the party, but at least they claim it will be public. Its not clear just how public, but hinted at is the ability for your laptop, or phone, to pin point its location without a clear view of the sky (no GPS) simply by virtue of what router you are talking to. There isn't a hint about feeding advertisers.

You have not yet heard of skyhook; either that or you aren't using wireless. http://www.skyhookwireless.com/ -- If you are using wireless, then your IP probably reveals your location to within meters.

hmm.. I'm using wireless and never seen any location services or ad companies (other than Google and Facebook when registered user) being able to even place me in the correct country.

"To pinpoint location, Skyhook's Core Engine uses a massive reference network comprised of the known locations of over 250 million Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers. To develop this database, Skyhook has deployed drivers to survey every single street, highway, and alley in tens of thousands of cities and towns worldwide, scanning for Wi-Fi access points and cell towers plotting their precise geographic locations. Skyhook's extensive coverage area includes most major metro areas in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia."

The answer is Skyhook, a company that war-drives our neighborhoods, collects WiFi info without permission, associates WiFi MACs or other identifying info with Lat. & Long. coordinates and sells a service that can tell WiFi receivers where they are.

So if it's evil for Google to war-drive and collect WiFi identifiers, shouldn't it also be evil for Skyhook?

Disclosure: I don't work for Google but a couple friends do...

You need to examine Skyhook's web-site more closely...

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/coverage.php/

"To develop this database, Skyhook has deployed drivers to survey every single street, highway, and alley in tens of thousands of cities and towns worldwide, scanning for Wi-Fi access points and cell towers plotting their precise geographic locations."

You are getting angry over something you did not even bother to understand. Google logs wireless access points with GPS data and signal strength in order to provide location-detection functions in Google Maps.

How else do you think an iPod touch magically figures out its location without a GPS receiver?

And Google is not even the first or only one to use Wi-Fi signals as a poor man's GPS. http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/whoweare/management.php
"... and Allen & Company." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tenet
"... February 2008 to become the managing director of the secretive investment bank Allen & Company."
NSA/Google http://www.pcworld.com/article/188581/the_googlensa_alliance_questions_and_answers.html

AFAIK the iPod touch and iPad both use Skyhook. Depending on where you use it, it's either almost as precise as GPS or completely useless, i.e. not working at all.

AFAIK the iPod touch and iPad both use Skyhook. Depending on where you use it, it's either almost as precise as GPS or completely useless, i.e. not working at all.

Exactly. There are serious data breaches every week somewhere in the U.S. and yet suddenly it's Crucifixion Time when Google records a snippet of information that you were already sending out publicly. Just surfing the Internet or searching on Google will give them far more information about you than that little cache of WiFi packets.

And what about Skyhook? Is it okay when they catalog all the WiFi stations in the U.S.? You think they didn't record any info? Oh, but wait, our fancy schmartphones use it for better location accuracy, so it's all good... move along, nothing to sue here.

To pinpoint location, the Core Engine uses a massive reference network comprised of the known locations of over 100 million Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers. To develop this database, Skyhook has deployed drivers to survey every single street, highway, and alley in tens of thousands of cities and towns worldwide, scanning for Wi-Fi access points and cell towers plotting their precise geographic locations. Skyhook's extensive coverage area includes most major metro areas in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/coverage.php

To the best of my knowledge, Apple's wi-fi based geolocation is based on Skyhook's offering in the area.

It is quite plausible to assume that Google, since they were already going to the expense of running the cars, figured that they could grab their own geolocation dataset for virtually no additional cost. However, their massive corporate wardrive episode is hardly the first of its kind, as Skyhook's products demonstrate.

These location services (google is not the only one) simply create a database of wifi names and correlate them to GPS. I don't see the problem here. If you dont want me to write down your hotspot's ssid then I suggest you stop broadcasting it.

Not quite. Skyhook provides the same service for Apple, and they work by correlating MAC addresses of APs with location.

I guess I don't mean that iPhone doesn't have wifi location - it's the provider of that information. Last I checked it was Skyhook who provided the data, not Google. Maybe the iPhone collects and aggregates the information in a similar fashion, but they don't share data back and forth. My phone knew where my old apartment was by wifi, but my iPod touch had no clue. In fact, my phone (WinMo) knew where I was everywhere in the city without ever turning on GPS, but, once again, my iPod had no idea.

Skyhook wireless is one major one. It's what the iPod Touch and original iPhone used. It's what Snow Leopard / Location services uses.

You do get a popup asking if you want to enable it.

Why was the Google StreetView system collecting this data to begin with?

To build a database of open wifi hotspots for Wi-Fi Geolocation to add location-based services to Android, much like how the iPhone and iPod Touch use Skyhook to do the exact same thing.

Glad I could help.

Not Google, but here is some info from Skyhooke: http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/coverage.php

Just the SSID/MAC's ma'am.

Not to confuse rants with facts.... and facts seem to be loosing ground here.

We don't know what exactly Google or Skyhooke collects. But if you go here: http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php

You'll see that you can submit your own wifi information. And what Skyhooke wants (which may be different from what they collect, but I digress) is the MAC address and your location.

And http://skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php

Sorry but recording all MAC addresses? Google's "Do no evil" just went out the door. There is no reason for Google to record the MAC addresses of devices.

Wow, that is evil. You know what would be even more evil? If that had been going on for years and if every Apple fanboy had been part of it.

That sure would be terrible. It's a good thing that this is a completely new development that nobody had ever thought of doing until now.

The Location API in the iPhone andiPod touch has been using this data since the devices were introduced. In Apple's case, they use the Skyhook API.

XPS leverages Wi-Fi access point information to accurately determine location information in dense urban areas or indoor environments.

Google Earth on the iPhone/iPod uses this API to determine location. In the case of the iPod, Skyhook is all the location info available.

Google is no doubt doing the same project themselves for their own location API for Android.

Nothing new here, just a politician making hay. Move along.

While I can't say that I'm delighted that Google is gathering even more data, I'm pretty sure that they aren't the first, just the most high profile, to do this.

Back when the original iPhone and iPod touch were released, they didn't have GPS hardware. However, Apple still offered location services on those models, through a deal with skyhook.

Skyhook has a gigantic database of wifi base stations, and their locations, which allows devices equipped with their service to use their wifi capabilities to provide decent, if not GPS grade, location fixes(works better in denser areas, obviously).

My assumption would be that, since Google is spending the cash to drive the little Google cars around anyway, they figured that it would be a virtually zero marginal cost to assemble a Skyhook-style database, probably to improve location services in future phones.

Again, I do not say this as a "Well, other guys are doing it, so google is OK.". I frankly find Google's capabilities slightly sinister. However, if you just focus on Google's fairly high-profile activities, you miss out on a lot of rather disconcerting stuff being done under the radar by smaller, or stealthier, outfits.

Frankly, other than in search, much of Google's sinister surveillance activity is rather derivative. They are more dangerous than some of the smaller guys because they are bigger, have more data sources to combine, and are quite possibly smarter about combining them; but the cutting edge of privacy and annonymity destruction is almost always being pioneered elsewhere.

Wifi to location is not provided by Google. The iPhone/iPod Touch use Skyhook Wireless.

Even when GPS is available, this service is being used inside buildings etc.

Yea, that would be all fine except ... they've been able to do the wifi locating for years before Android came into existence.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/ is who is telling them where your wifi is.

Your droid isn't special.

My iPad has correctly found me in all four locations I've tried by triangulating WIFI access points.

Apparently mobile users with GPS have tagged my access points.

That would be Skyhook that licenses their database to Apple. They claim not to use any user-generated wifi locations but only wifi locations found by driving special trucks and scan access points themselves. They claim that this results in better accuracy then user generated locations.

The GPS is part of the 3G chipset; thus, the Wi-Fi version does not have GPS. This is readily confirmed on the specs page. The Wi-Fi version DOES use Skyhook Wireless for location finding, and it works remarkably well.

I'm pretty sure it works in the UK (having seen a talk here from one of their marketing droids). According to them "XPS uses a massive reference network comprised of the known locations of over 100 million Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers. ... Skyhook's extensive coverage area includes most major metro areas in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia".

Not sure what the accuracy is for just wifi though. Their performance claims seem to just talk about the hybrid version which needs GPS.

I'm pretty sure it works in the UK (having seen a talk here from one of their marketing droids). According to them "XPS uses a massive reference network comprised of the known locations of over 100 million Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers. ... Skyhook's extensive coverage area includes most major metro areas in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia".

Not sure what the accuracy is for just wifi though. Their performance claims seem to just talk about the hybrid version which needs GPS.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that the iPhone, and therefore most likely the iPad, can get location without GPS via Skyhook and the known locations of wireless access points.

You are correct. I was surprised when my iPod Touch was able to identify my location. It took some research before I figured out that it was getting it from Skyhook Wireless. It actually put my position on the street just outside the house, presumably where someone drove by with a sniffer and picked up the SSID of the WiFi AP I was using.

I realized what was going on and that I should submit my AP MAC addresses to correct their location.

It's possible that it sees an AP near you that's recently been moved.

I notice there's no way to opt-out once your WAP has been entered in their database. Those 3G cell network -> WiFi bridge devices are very mobile, and any attempt to cache their location will end in failure.

Skyhook claims "we also understand that your exact physical location is inherently private and that it should only be used in very limited ways over which you have control."[emphasis mine] but apparently that doesn't apply to the owners of the wifi networks whose location is in their database.

Skyhook's reliance on wireless APs doesn't work so well when the APs move. I took my APs with me when I moved to a new place, but my iPhone (which uses Skyhook's assisted-GPS) thought I was always at my old place for months until I realized what was going on and that I should submit my AP MAC addresses to correct their location.

It's possible that it sees an AP near you that's recently been moved.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/

Thought some of you might find this interesting...

From their site:

Skyhook's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) is the world's first location platform to use the native 802.11 radio already on a mobile device to deliver accurate positioning across the US. And soon the world.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/

Never tried it myself.

I love this silly blog... "according to news sources..."... like it's some kind of secret database. Here's a better source: http://www.skyhookwireless.com/ On their front page

"Skyhook Wireless provides a software-only positioning system that leverages a nationwide database of known Wi-Fi access points to calculate the precise location of any Wi-Fi enabled device. "

There is a short list of applications that are already using this. Most notably Skyhook Wireless, Meetro and Active Campus.

The private company is Skyhook Wireless

They hit the front page in June.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/ 21/2322250&from=rss

http://www.wardriving.com/ Wardriving news
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/wiglet ogoogleearth Script for mapping wireless APs
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/news/press_rel_8.pd f Skyhook E-911 press release.
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/scanning/upload.php Want to be a professional wardriver? Sign up here!

http://www.wardriving.com/ Wardriving news
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/wiglet ogoogleearth Script for mapping wireless APs
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/news/press_rel_8.pd f Skyhook E-911 press release.
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/scanning/upload.php Want to be a professional wardriver? Sign up here!

If you are a senior Java developer with GIS experience these guys may be interetsed in You http://www.skyhookwireless.com/company/careers.htm l

"To be honest, I don't care how novel their ideas are. Using a system where position is located based on such arbitrary measurements is not only silly, but a waste of time."

Indeed. Sounds more like these two conned some venture capital money out of some schmucks, using a lot of technological gibbirish to make it sound like a untapped gold mine venture.

How reminescent of the 90's. :-)