Google Deducing Wireless Location Data

bizwriter writes "When it comes to knowing where wireless users are, the carriers have had a lock on the data. But a patent application shows that Google is trying to deduce the information based on packet headers and estimated transmission rates. This would let it walk right around carriers and become another source of location data to advertisers."

Comments

Amazing Google

[TechForensics]

You gotta admire Google. They are so endlessly, avidly proliferating themselves. If they ever turn evil we could be in a lot of trouble.

Re:Amazing Google

[wizardforce]

Google has a legal duty to do not what is morally right, but what is in their shareholder's interest

I *know* that I'm going to be burning some karma here but to me, "the shareholders made them do it" isn't an excuse for violating human rights.

Google figured that now would be their best time to speak out against it and have the maximum impact.

They were just hacked and at the time, it was believed to be the work of Chinese hackers. This I suspect had a lot to do with why Google threatened to pull out of China and stop cooperating with the Chinese govt. In any case, I believe that my original point still stands; Google may have not broken any laws by participating in censorship in China but that does not mean they aren't evil. Willingly abiding by evil laws is evil in of its self.

Eh?

[PCM2]

If the carriers are "jealously guarding" their location data, how come every time I pull up Google Maps on my non-GPS BlackBerry it can figure out where I am to within a block or so? Either this patent is for a technology Google had figured out a long time ago, or else the carriers aren't as worried about having "a lock" on this data as TFA makes it sound.