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Google Deducing Wireless Location Data

Posted by timothy on from the peekaboo-the-van-sees-you dept.

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."

19 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Amazing Google by TechForensics · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
    1. Re:Amazing Google by wizardforce · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If they ever turn evil we could be in a lot of trouble.

      If?

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    2. Re:Amazing Google by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I hope they figure it out, because ATT somehow keeps my new Samsung phone from running Google maps properly. It can't figure out where it is at all. Makes it useless.

      I don't want to pay the fuckers "by the drink" for a GPS service. And I want to strangle the marketer that invented that idiotic bit of buzzword bingo too.

      --
      Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
    3. Re:Amazing Google by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I can't remember the name, but in Snowcrash there was a company that was privatized from the government made up of the NSA and the Library of Congress. Google demonstrates more of the fictional company's capabilities every day

      --
      Wherever You Go, There You Are
    4. Re:Amazing Google by wizardforce · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It was just an example, the first one I could find. Google has been cooperating with the Chinese govt. in terms of censoring their results since 2006. Google only very recently showed their unwillingness to continue censoring their results after the infamous hack on Google's operations. There isn't any evidence that Google did this for anything other than selfish reasons.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    5. Re:Amazing Google by Darkness404 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Google is a publicly traded company. They have to answer to their shareholders, lets see here, they could either ignore 1/6th of the earths population or be like every other company and censor. Google has a legal duty to do not what is morally right, but what is in their shareholder's interest. Completely ignoring a billion people is not what shareholders want. Google figured that now would be their best time to speak out against it and have the maximum impact.

      It would be one thing if Microsoft, Yahoo, and every other search engine stood up against the Chinese government but they didn't.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    6. Re:Amazing Google by davester666 · · Score: 2, Funny

      call me if Google manages to pass any of the wireless carriers on the 'evil' scale...if it's even possible.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    7. Re:Amazing Google by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    8. Re:Amazing Google by wizardforce · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Freedom of speech. Governments should never be given an inherent right to censor speech of individuals nor the private sector in general.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    9. Re:Amazing Google by causality · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd rather be spammed with location aware ads than something thats no where near me.

      I frequently see variants of this notion and I still don't understand it.

      I generally don't impulse-buy. I believe that the model of independently determining my wants and needs and then shopping for the best solution available soundly beats the model of listening to a company tell me why that company is good for me, buying items for needs I never even knew I had. As in, I don't just think that sounds good, I really believe that which means I practice it. So, unless it is free broadcast radio or free broadcast television, I don't want to see active ads of any kind. They're useless for me. They're also useless for the advertiser, as the sole effect they have on my purchasing decisions is that if one is particularly annoying, I make it a point to go with a competitor.

      I'm fine with passive advertisements. They are more like opt-in/client-pull, whereas active advertisements are more like opt-out/server-push. Good examples are directories like the Yellow Pages and any online equivalents. When I want something your company sells, I know where to find you. Until then, I don't want to hear from you and it's in your business interests not to contact me against my will since I won't buy from people who are pushy. By nature, there's no reason for these to be location-aware.

      I think this is more common than what would be immediately apparent. Even if it isn't, consider that lots of people who are influenced by ads will still go to some trouble to block them. So the point is not so much the motivation, it's that the goal of many is to avoid ads, at least when it comes to a service you are already paying for, such as cellphone service. In that case, why would I care about whether an ad is location-aware? I'm not going to respond to it favorably anyway. To me, saying "at least the ads were location-aware" is like being fatally stabbed with a spear and saying "at least it's been polished recently", as though a tarnished spear is less fatal than a shiny one. It's actually much worse because location-aware means that someone knows my location whether or not I wanted to disclose this information to them. As a customer, unwanted and unauthorized disclosure of my personal information is not something I care to pay for.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    10. Re:Amazing Google by belrick · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Did you not read the Google S-1 filing? Here: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504073639/ds1.htm Their shareholders don't have much of a leg to stand on if they want to second guess Google management.

    11. Re:Amazing Google by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative
      Wow, that is the densest post I have seen in a long time. Companies ignore the interest of shareholders all the time. Apple, for example, would be paying dividends if it really cared about its shareholders. They have the cash, and a lot of shareholders really want it.

      The legal requirements towards shareholders is really weak. About the only thing you can't do is deceive the shareholders about what you are planning.

      Completely ignoring a billion people is not what shareholders want.

      That's really bold of you to speak for all those people you don't know. In fact, in this case we know that the significant portion of Google shareholders actually do want Google to stop censoring search results in China.

      Companies are run by people. They aren't faceless borgs; the problem is you don't know the faces of the people running the companies, so it's easy for you to imagine they are evil. In reality they are no more evil than the people running them.

      --
      Qxe4
  2. Carriers can mess with this? by KenMcM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's stopping carriers from deliberately slowing transmission rates for random customers during random intervals? Just enough such that Google's data is inaccurate.

    1. Re:Carriers can mess with this? by Moridin42 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Carriers need to do something deliberate to randomly slow transmission rates for random customers? I would like to know which carrier this is. Are they located in the US?

      --
      I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
  3. slashdot needs new google tags... by adosch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Aside from 'google' 'mobile' 'patents' 'privacy' 'cellphones' and 'story' ... there should *always* be a 'not surprised' and 'obvious'. Google is king of data pillaging and border-line inter-personal information mining. This may fail or it could be highly successful for Google; regardless of the outcome, they've got their hands in just about anything as it pertains to identity on the internet now. This shouldn't be any more surprising; and it sounds pretty cool.

  4. Eh? by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  5. answered your own question by SuperBanana · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Either this patent is for a technology Google had figured out a long time ago

    Ding ding ding. Google's been using the technology for a while; they just filed for the application.

    You don't have to file for a patent the second you invent something. In fact, you usually want to wait as long as possible before the final steps. You get your foot in the door by filing some paperwork with the patent attorney, notarizing documents showing the invention, etc. etc.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  6. The real reason for Google's DNS change suggestion by GrantRobertson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now we know the real reason for the suggestion Google has made recently to change the way DNS works to report part of the requesting IP address. They don't give one whit about decreasing unnecessary traffic. They just want to use that for additional location data.

  7. Re:The real reason for Google's DNS change suggest by GrantRobertson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Modifying DNS in the way they are requesting could be used - along with the technologies mentioned in this article - to determine or narrow down location information even on connections that aren't going to Google's servers. Thus allowing Google to track location information on everyone in the world all the time. That would be very valuable information to Google even if it were not as accurate as GPS, or as specific as a whole IP address, and even if it were in aggregate form.

    The more information they can glom together the better for them and potentially worse for us in the long run. Especially when they redefine "evil" to mean "anything that doesn't help us make money."