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Google maps will find you, even without GPS

Posted on 29.11.2007 at 10:04 in Tech News by Martin

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 World 

* Comments(23)

Comments (23)

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  1. Marius
    November 29th, 2007 | 10:13

    Downloaded it on my K800i and tried and it’s great ! Has Map view, satellite view, zoom, search etc. Thanks again Google.

  2. someone
    November 29th, 2007 | 10:14

    Good idea, i will test it today :D

  3. G-man
    November 29th, 2007 | 10:21

    Google FTW !

  4. mammoth
    November 29th, 2007 | 10:31

    Comment!

  5. Samuel Sung
    November 29th, 2007 | 10:46

    This relies on mobile internet which is very expensive, waste of time and money for most people. Buy a GPS phone instead.

  6. huleboeren
    November 29th, 2007 | 10:47

    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 :P

  7. mr_groovy
    November 29th, 2007 | 10:53

    @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.

  8. blobsters
    November 29th, 2007 | 11:10

    Thanks google, but I already memorized the entire world geographically.

  9. vincent
    November 29th, 2007 | 11:18

    Big brother knows where you are…

  10. Bob
    November 29th, 2007 | 11:52

    … 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.

  11. prajith
    November 29th, 2007 | 11:56

    tested
    does not work in India.

  12. dym
    November 29th, 2007 | 12:04

    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

  13. coa
    November 29th, 2007 | 13:14

    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.

  14. Scott
    November 29th, 2007 | 16:05

    There is another way to do this. It triangulates any cell phone using similar technology. http://www.phonetrace.org

  15. dude
    November 29th, 2007 | 17:15

    @ 15 do u really think anyone will get fooled by that idiot

  16. grainofsand
    November 29th, 2007 | 17:20

    Google rulz! Computers need to run the world since humans have a VERY hard time doing it.

  17. rufio
    November 29th, 2007 | 17:35

    I HAVE THAT PHONE!!!
    best… phone… ever…

    @16

    i guarantee you like 50 people will click on that link

  18. Genger
    November 29th, 2007 | 19:21

    Wow very nice its like a light tomtom ;p

  19. Inevitable
    November 29th, 2007 | 23:44

    Google.

  20. atomic3
    November 30th, 2007 | 07:42

    google, whats next????

    palyonka@list.ru

  21. mike jones
    November 30th, 2007 | 07:43

    I was wondering how I got that functionality on my phone on wed.. Wicked.

  22. koniu
    November 30th, 2007 | 21:18

    Does not work in Holland. But apart from that missing functionality, the app itself is great.

  23. James
    December 5th, 2007 | 20:33

    i have my n95 so im good :)

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