Monday, June 9. 2008

Google Will Open My Location Feature to Developers

That's what the Google Mobile blog has the suggest. Recall this is technology that uses cell tower ids. The article offers a brief description but no link to the details of the calls in the APIs of Mobile and Gears, which are apparently slated to support My Location.

We're happy to lift the covers and give you a peek into the inner workings of the Google location server, which powers the My Location feature.

Wireless phones can make and receive calls because they are connected over the air to a nearby cell tower. The phone knows the ID of the cell tower that it's currently using. If the phone has GPS, the Maps application on the phone sends the GPS coordinates along with the cell ID to the Google location server. Over millions of such updates, across multiple phones, carriers, and times, the server clusters the GPS updates corresponding to a particular cell ID to find their rough center. So when a phone without GPS needs its own location, the application on the phone queries the Google location server with the cell tower ID to translate that into a geographic location, i.e., lat/long coordinates. Nifty, huh? We think so.

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