Google in Location based services

With the new My Location service Google improves its Google Maps for mobile devices.

Google maps on mobile devices can use a GPS to locate you. However, the interesting thing of this new My Location service is that works even without GPS and it is still be able to determine your position.

As it is explained in Google Mobile Blog, My Location is a new beta technology from Google that uses cell tower identification to provide you with approximate location information, so it will work on phones without GPS.

Most probably Google uses the Cell ID, (the ID of the cell tower) to find your location. The location is found by having a database with Cell ID – location. The idea is not new since we had used this method in our previous work. But good to see that it is in a product now.

As a side note, Nokia also provides free maps and location services on your Nokia mobile devices but it only uses GPS. Some of the new Nokia´s mobile phones have the GPS incorporated in the device. Otherwise, an external Bluetooth GPS costs more or less 40 euros.

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