[sdz]

This is extremely interesting. One thing I didn't understand was how this location database is being built. Is Google collecting GPS signals and WIFI hotspots so that the two can be associated to pinpoint your location? If so, does that mean Android phones are periodically sending your location back to Google? Do Apple, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft do the same thing?

[drewvolpe]

Yes, exactly. And that's what the fight is over. Google doesn't want to get cut out from having android phones send them the wifi points they see as Google needs that data to build their database.

Apple used to use Skyhook and more recently has created their own by having iPhones send them data. The recent privacy blow up over the iPhone's keeping a location log wasn't actually the user's location, but a cache of their version of the skyhook database.

[rst]

If you tell an Android phone to use visible WiFi access points to narrow down your location, you're giving it permission to send that info to Google in order to query the database --- and, of course, to help them build it up. At least with the "stock" Android skin (as seen on my Nexus One) the dialog box you get to enable WiFi use is explicit that it's sending location info elsewhere.

(You can say no; I did, and the phone periodically whines at me that I'm not getting the best possible location fixes because of it. But that may still not completely cut off the flow of location data to the cloud. You can infer a lot about peoples' locations and intentions from a Google Maps query stream even if they don't come labeled as "this is my current location" --- and it's hard to tell from the outside which of them do.)

[throwaway32]

pretty much every vendor has an agreement with skyhook to share this kind of information.

[recoiledsnake]

> Do Apple, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft do the same thing?

Yes, they're all doing this.