“Google Inc.’s collection of location information from millions of mobile devices and personal computers is ‘extremely valuable’ to the company’s future business, according to an email written by a Google product manager last year,” Amir Efrati reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“That email and others, which are part of a public filing in a lawsuit against Google last year, shed new light on the company’s thinking about the need to gather location-related data. Such information is essential for a growing number of mobile applications and websites to function properly, the emails indicate,” Efrati reports. “It is also useful for companies such as Google— whose Android software powers millions of phones—that want to offer consumers advertisements that are tailored to their locations, a new frontier for online ads.”
Efrati reports, “‘I cannot stress enough how important Google’s Wi-Fi location database is to our Android and mobile-product strategy,’ wrote Steve Lee, the Google product manager, in an email that emerged in a suit filed against Google by Skyhook Wireless Inc. in a Massachusetts court… Skyhook, [which currently provides location information for some Apple devices and] which once provided location services for Google but is now a competitor, sued Google for allegedly interfering with Skyhook’s relations with Motorola and also for violating patents related to location-collection data. Google is seeking to have the suit dismissed.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]