Google maps will find you, even without GPS
Google launched a location service for mobile users on Wednesday that doesn’t rely on GPS. Google Maps with My Location, currently in beta, locates users who don’t have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn’t as accurate as GPS (Global Positioning System) but works for people who lack the positioning technology in their phones. “It helps users speed up search by showing the general neighborhood they’re in,” said Steve Lee, product manager at Google for the service. Without the location service, users must type in their address or neighborhood in order to find nearby businesses using Google Maps. Google Maps with My Location will use GPS data to locate the user if the phone has the capability. But even for users of GPS-enabled phones, the cell location service might be useful, Lee said. That’s because the cell tower feature works better indoors than GPS, it doesn’t drain the phone battery as quickly and can bring up a result quicker, he said.
The service could be useful to a person who might be traveling in an unfamiliar city and looking for restaurants or other businesses. A user pulls up Google Maps and hits the zero key on the phone. A blue dot will appear on the map in the user’s location. Google says the cell tower technique will locate the user within about 1000 meters. It doesn’t use triangulation, which calculates a user location based on the user’s distance to three nearby towers. Instead, it essentially shows the range of the tower that the user’s phone is connecting to. In order to use the service, phone owners must download a free application from Google. The application will work on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones as well as many phones that support Java.
Source: eWeek, PC WorldÂ
Comments(23)
Downloaded it on my K800i and tried and it’s great ! Has Map view, satellite view, zoom, search etc. Thanks again Google.
Good idea, i will test it today
Google FTW !
Comment!
This relies on mobile internet which is very expensive, waste of time and money for most people. Buy a GPS phone instead.
My cellphone provider has done this for a long time..
All it does is check what antenna youre connected to, draw a perimeter – voila, you are somewhere within that circle
@5 That depends on which country you are.
I own a htc tytn which does not have an internal gps.
Though I have unlimited internet acces for 9 euro’s a month @ t-mobile. So this is great thx for the update Martin.
Thanks google, but I already memorized the entire world geographically.
Big brother knows where you are…
… that’s good, he can give me a ride.
In all seriousness, your cell provider always knows where you are; the advantage is that now, so do you. Nice app.
tested
does not work in India.
isn’t it faster just to look for some streetname instead? It is like putting a fat thumb on a very tiny map and say “we’re here”. It isn’t of any use…
maybe in the jungle or desert or siberia or something but my guess is, there aren’t any phonetowers around to trace you xD
We built a similar application 7 years ago on wml(WAP) in Europe. Although the European mobile network is much more sophisticated than the US there are privacy(much stricter) issues that we could not go around. The Operators are not allowed to give the position information to third parties. There is a way that the user receives his position and then transmits it to the application but the user was spammed with disclaimers. At the end nobody wanted to use it. I don’t know if anything changed in this regard up to now. Anyway this is not a new idea.
There is another way to do this. It triangulates any cell phone using similar technology. http://www.phonetrace.org
@ 15 do u really think anyone will get fooled by that idiot
Google rulz! Computers need to run the world since humans have a VERY hard time doing it.
I HAVE THAT PHONE!!!
best… phone… ever…
@16
i guarantee you like 50 people will click on that link
Wow very nice its like a light tomtom ;p
Google.
google, whats next????
palyonka@list.ru
I was wondering how I got that functionality on my phone on wed.. Wicked.
Does not work in Holland. But apart from that missing functionality, the app itself is great.
i have my n95 so im good