November 28, 2007

Google Mobile Maps PinPoints Your Location Without GPS

Erick Schonfeld

75 comments »

Google has been adding features to its maps at a fast and furious pace. Yesterday, it was terrain and wiki-style collaboration for its Web-based maps. Today, it updated its mobile maps to pinpoint your locations by triangulating between cell towers (or if you have GPS on your phone, it uses that, but only 15 percent of phones sold this year even support GPS). I just downloaded the My Location app to my Blackberry (sans GPS), and it pinpointed me to within a block of my location in Manhattan. I’m a little blinking blue dot on the map. Although, if I move around the office, it picks up another set of cell towers and puts me nearly six blocks away. Oh, wait, now it has me nearly perfectly on the right block. Now it has be around the corner again. At least it’s got the right neighborhood—and Manhattan does have a lot of cell towers.

Here’s a video explaining how it works:

Sphere It

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=Jason

November 28th, 2007 at 10:32 am

Great, I always wanted to know where I am.
Chris R.

November 28th, 2007 at 10:34 am

That’s pretty cool. I wouldn’t dump my GPS for triangulation though.
Angela Hayden

November 28th, 2007 at 10:37 am

It’s nice to have options. Google is so thoughtful.
Chris R.

November 28th, 2007 at 10:46 am

“It’s nice to have options. Google is so thoughtful.”

It’s not like they’re trying to do everything on god’s earth to get you sucking on the Google teet, then when you’re unweanable, siphon off pennies and or dollars whenever and where ever they can.
Google isn’t free as in freedom, they’re free as in Beer. And just you wait until they cash in on the windfall stage of their ventures. Do some evil.
Alan Wilensky

November 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am

Signal TOA (time of arrival) systems are not meant to replace GPS, obviously!

And regarding the performance of such systems, environments such as the inner city, like NYC, have a significant multi path problem that degrades accuracy. But, if you phone is devoid of GPS, why knock it!

In open areas free from reflected signal paths, TOA systems can be as accurate as GPS, depending on the precision of the central timebase and software introduced errors.

This was my field before stumbling into my present career as an analyst. I miss working on real things. hmmmmm…..mid-life career retrofit.
The Hater

November 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am

@3: Yeah, they’re so thoughtful. What a great, caring company! In no way do they want to squeeze every little cent out of you.

Tra la la, I love Google, they’re so warm and fluffy!
CRed

November 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am

Will this work on the iPhone? If not, they need to rush to add it because this is one of the main features the iPhone is missing.
Randy

November 28th, 2007 at 10:50 am

I guess this doesn’t work on my iPhone.

Thanks, Apple. Can you at least tell me how to get rid of the “iTunes Store” advertisement on my iPhone’s home screen?
airj1012

November 28th, 2007 at 10:50 am

It’s great except for one thing. I’m not sure why they have such a strangle 5 digit short code (33669). With such a unique phrase as “BLUEDOT” couldn’t they use it on their existing short codes like GOOGLE (466453)?

Also is anyone have problems with embedded YouTube videos? I tried scrolling through the loaded movie to look up the short code number and it stopped playing. However I viewed the video on YouTube’s site and there was no problem. Just wondering if it was just me.
Daniel Gibbons

November 28th, 2007 at 10:52 am

I thought the number of phones with GPS capabilities was much higher than 15%. The number that have any kind of GPS software or services is small, but I was under the impression that the majority of new cellphones now had a GPS chip.
Chris R.

November 28th, 2007 at 10:53 am

“they’re so warm and fluffy!”

You don’t happen to work at Microsoft, AOL or anything right?
I thought so.
Rick

November 28th, 2007 at 10:55 am

@ HATER

Really, they take your money everyday I’m sure.

Just how many checks have you sent to Google thus far?
Go back to work at yahoo.
lol

———————-
# The Hater

November 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am

@3: Yeah, they’re so thoughtful. What a great, caring company! In no way do they want to squeeze every little cent out of you.

Tra la la, I love Google, they’re so warm and fluffy!
Chris R.

November 28th, 2007 at 11:01 am

“Just how many checks have you sent to Google thus far?”

Google got me for about 2k on adsense so far. They did send me a crappy little personal calendar a few years back though. BTW, that dude is probably from Microsoft. I can tell. Hey dude from MS, I loved that GQ “lawyer” you sent to court against me a few months ago. He smelled like booze and cheap cologne. Good thing he was connected to the hive, or else he could have fallen over from the hard work of having to stand up.
Chris R.

November 28th, 2007 at 11:02 am

=~ s/adsense/adwords/;
Andy

November 28th, 2007 at 11:03 am

I installed it on my phone, but get this error when I click “My Location (0)”: “Your current location is temporarily unavailable.” …if my location was unavailable, how would I be here? I want to use this feature!
Johnny Saucedo

November 28th, 2007 at 11:10 am

Not to be pedantic, but triangulation does not seem correct. Shouldn’t it be trilateration or mulitlateration?
Varun

November 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am

Will it work only in the USA or outside as well ?? Im trying now
The Hater

November 28th, 2007 at 11:18 am

@12, 13: Oh, you’re all so smart. Well done exposing me! Let me say this - like Upton Sinclair might say, you can get a better look at the jungle from the inside the walls of the kingdom. Oh, hmm, I may have said too much..

Ich bin ein Googler.
Indiana Jones

November 28th, 2007 at 11:19 am

eric, I am surprised you did not mention yahoo fireeagle which techcrunch has an article weeks ago. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....formation/
Chris R.

November 28th, 2007 at 11:27 am

“Ich bin ein Googler.” I take it back I was wrong. You’re not a Googler nor are you German. You could have been a softie though. People that I know from Google, almost all of them are dry and would never use metaphoric phrasing like that. I do know some people at MS like that though, like Mr. Marcucci, and I use the term Mr. very loosely.
rod / techwatching.com

November 28th, 2007 at 11:28 am

Triangulation services have been around for a while - though I don’t recall the name of the specific one I’m thinking of. The original business plan was to tie advertising to location aware devices (as well as proximity search, etc - i.e. “greek restaurants close to my location.” Evidently didn’t amount to much as its fully off the radar.

http://techwatching.com/index......e+location
browse

November 28th, 2007 at 11:37 am

doesn’t work on my razr v3m
The Hater

November 28th, 2007 at 11:38 am

@20: Chris, your intelligence and amazingly perceptive powers never cease to blow me away. Such accuracy! No, wrong word..such generalization! Enjoying your poutine today, are you?

Also, read a book on JFK.
Chris R.

November 28th, 2007 at 11:44 am

“@20: Chris, your intelligence and amazingly perceptive powers never cease to blow me away. Such accuracy! No, wrong word..such generalization! Enjoying your poutine today, are you?”

Consider I had to infer about a random person on the internet. That’s 1/1billion people it could have been(English speakers), then to cross reference that against about 75k softies and about 15k employees at Google, minus about 30% who don’t have spectacular English language skills.

If you do work at either MS or Google consider my generalization powers to be god like to have picked that needle out of the haystack of the internet. You should see my search engine. I had an honest to god Googler contact me this morning about it.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
privacy please

November 28th, 2007 at 11:51 am

What else Google wants to collect under the name of service!
Ankur Jain

November 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

This is an awesome feature! How to access it on iPhone?
Bernie Lomax

November 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

Complain a little more Erick about a sweet free service.
puiu

November 28th, 2007 at 12:06 pm

work it my s-e k800i…thx
jb

November 28th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

I have been waiting for this feature! I downloaded it on my Blackberry and it works…. kind of. “My location” is about a mile away from my actual location. But I’m in a building maybe that’s why. I’m not going to complain even about it being a mile off…. because I’ve been on the road many times and been like where the hell am I?? And had to scroll all over on Google Maps to find my general location. At least it will narrow it down with little to no effort.

Thanks Google!
TT

November 28th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

Any idea on whether they will use this service to help display ads on digital displays (e.g., outside sidewalk billboards) that target the search requests or other info emitted from the cellphone? Or, is this not accurate enough on pinpointing the location of the cellphone?
skeptical dude

November 28th, 2007 at 12:15 pm

Techcrunch takes so long to load that I try whenever possible to just read it through google reader. It freezes my browser with all of your ads. It’s great that you have a lot of advertisers, but if it makes people leave the site it doesn’t mean much. Good content nonetheless.
George Hari

November 28th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

Hey guys, sorry for interrupting your little family fight, but the address http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/index.html returns a 404 error for a long time. So, they give us TOA but they forget the HTML code behind.
2001-2008

November 28th, 2007 at 12:17 pm

All those who want to use this feature on iphone can use an application i am currently writing… it would send text msg of you location to everyone in your phonebook every 15 minutes…
so the next time you are having “client dinner”… watch out for your wife!
Scary

November 28th, 2007 at 12:21 pm

Technology get scary sometimes… Invasion of Privacy. Did you know Facebook stole massive data from private government and ConnectU.

I think Google should create strong privacy lock. Google guys sign up facebook and got identity stolen by facebook.
Rob Abbott

November 28th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

iPhone please.
facebookjunkie

November 28th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

@1:

You made my day.

I needed that laugh.
Bernie Lomax

November 28th, 2007 at 1:10 pm

Skeptical dude: Download Firefox. Install Ad Blocker Plus. TechCrunch and the Internet will be far more enjoyable for you…
Chris

November 28th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

The previous version of google maps worked fine for my Sprint Katana 1 (scp-6600) but when I went to download, install and run the new version, I get a “Game/Application Terminated” message. No Java exception information unfortunately.

Hopefully this is a bug that wasn’t found when testing with my exact model and google will shortly fix. So, for the moment, anyone know how and where I can download the previous version?

Also, you guys seriously think that the rest of us are interested in hearing about your little squabble? Exchange emails/numbers and take it somewhere else!
ckd

November 28th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

Google Maps 2.0 instantly crashes my (pretty old) Blackberry
Chris Bucchere

November 28th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

Anyone gotten this to work on a Treo 700p?

I installed the new app (version 2) but this functionality doesn’t appear to be there.

Chris Bucchere
http://www.feedhaus.com
Roland Schopp

November 28th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

Don’t know, whether you know http://www.qype.de .
They a re doing this since at least 4 month. I installed it on my SE K800i and it worked like a charm.

Roland
Roland Schopp

November 28th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

Upps,

not qype. I meant http://www.myquiro.de. Sorry.

Roland
Aaron

November 28th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

Not the most accurate thing (nearly 2 miles off for me), but that might be because I am in the burbs. I will have to give it a try in the city.

Awesome feature if it does prove to be a little more accurate because it will at least drop you in the right zipcode.

This feature would have kept me from crashing my last rental car. BBs are at least 10 time more dangerous to use while driving that regular phone and Google Maps has got to be twice as dangerous as that.

Nuvi please
Erik Giberti

November 28th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

My old SonyEricsson T68i from AT&T had a triangulation package like this that would let me find coffee shops etc near by as well as other AT&T customers. I hated that they did away with it during the transition to Cingular - I guess I was the only one using it.
Steve Ballmer

November 28th, 2007 at 3:25 pm

We are going to sue over this, since MSwifiStreetLocator had this first!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
jojo

November 28th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

@39. Version 2.0 instantly crashes my BB, too. It’s a new 8830 from Verizon.
Kiko

November 28th, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Loopt’s best bet now is to try to sell to Facebook for $2-$3 million.
Bloobeard

November 28th, 2007 at 4:00 pm

One has been able to triangulate lat. and long. in Australia for ages by sending an SMS. But it hasn’t been highly publicised. Good if you are lost and need to contact emergency services.
Vijay Chakravarthy

November 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

My main question: Are they patenting 0-click?
Moe Glitz

November 28th, 2007 at 4:38 pm

I love the total innocence and naivety of the video, especially as it gives out serious health warnings to anyone who is even considering punching in the keywords ‘Tottenham Court Road’.
What next for Google Maps on your Mobile - warnings such as, ‘Punching in Keywords for Map Locations can seriously damage your health’.

Could someone who is using this service please try a test and find out which is more faster.
(a) Punching in the keywords ‘Tottenham Court Road’.
(b) Punching the 0 button and waiting for your Blue Dot Locator.

Sorry if I may cause you to starve in testing the letter ‘a’ option, but don’t blame me, blame Google as they never gave out a Public Warning for using Keywords on Google Maps.

Plus what nerd used Tottenham Court Road as an valid indicator in using this new Google Maps Service.
I live in London and Tottenham Court Road has so many signs and points of interest that shouts out the name of the street, that even Mr Magoo would know where he is.

Does the nerd that made this video know that TCR is a one way street, or that the Queen musical ‘We Will Rock You’ is playing there.
Or perhaps the starving man that is lost there could enjoy a real big feast in TCR, by popping in to the local ‘Spearmint Rhino’.

Ahh London. Red Buses and Mary Poppins.
VPZONE

November 28th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

It doesn’t seem to work from iPhone. Even tried to go to goole.com - mobile and classic version.. still not working. Where are TC applefanboys??
JTR

November 28th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

Nice idea but get it right before you launch it. Think about it, who will ever trust this service if they cannot come within feet of your location, which the current standard GPS does. I am quite surprised they would release this in its current state. And the terrain feature is pretty much a bust in my view as well. Unless you are in an area where there is significant elevation change (1000+ feet) you really don’t get the feel of a topo map - which I believe they are trying to emulate. Google usually does a nice job. I hope they are not letting their standards slip.
bill

November 28th, 2007 at 6:47 pm

Fire Duncan!!!!!
Eric Dewhirst

November 28th, 2007 at 10:10 pm

This is where it begins - I am not a Google Fanboy - but this is where it begins.

Local advertising now has legs - mom and pop shops can see the value of a google mobile ads.

Hats off to Google - this is going to be very huge - and that is an understatement.

Cheers,

Eric
PS - funny how Google has that offer that if you go around and get info on small businesses and tell them about Google and they will give you $10 bucks per business you go and talk to - an army of Google sales people. (http://www.google.com/services/local-business-referrals/repfaq.html)
Exchange3D

November 28th, 2007 at 10:42 pm

Isn’t it a well known fact that tower triangulation is not a very accurate source of location data? It might help if you are lost in the middle of nowhere… no wait, in the middle of nowhere you may not be picking up that much of a signal… oops. Otherwise, accuracy within 5 miles radious - not so helpful in a big city.
Satya

November 29th, 2007 at 12:39 am

I have Sony Ericsson K810i Cyber-shot phone. Today i downloaded new Beta soft. from Google by pointing my phone’s Net-Front Browser to maps.google.com

after downloading, it took a while to load ( blue bar… ). Later it showed me “Your current location is temporarily unavailable”.

I didn’t closed Google Maps software. I started searching the web by typing the above generated error in Google Web Search on my PC.

Roughly in 5 or say 10 minutes when i checked my phone, I got my approximate location within 1700 metres. So It definitely works.

Do one thing ; Go to Menu->Help->About/info-> Scroll Down to the last line. You will see just like that :-

404:59:some numbers:some numbers

Here 404 means India
and 59 stands for CellOne Rajasthan.

This is a network code.

If that type of thing appears then wait for sometimes as your software might be in processing stage.

This is a useful thing. Thanks a millions to Google. Though in Beta stage it’s not pinpointed like Good SONY GPS devices but at least when you are travelling via bus or Train then say at midnight while you get up from your birth then you can get some info about your current location. It’s cool. The other way to get info is to use Cell Information feature in your phone. For Sony Ericsson phones, go to MESSAGING->SETTINGS->AREA INFO->CELL INFORMATION->ON

in standby screen you’ll see the name of place as a second line after Network name. ( Provided your operator supports. )

Thanks.
Future Forecast

November 29th, 2007 at 6:40 am

All this media coverage and hype for this feature comes down to one thing: You no longer need to set your “home location” when you are browsing the map or find the city you have travelled to by browsing the Google map. Its just a little faster now to get your general bearing. Like many other software features, small things can make your life just a tad simpler so that you can focus on the big picture … So, good effort Google.

—
Future Converged
http://www.futureconverged.com
AnonTroll

November 29th, 2007 at 8:52 am

@40 Chris, I can’t get it to work on my Treo 700p, I tried multiple times and I keep getting the old version V1.2.0.9.
Kame_pl

November 29th, 2007 at 10:36 am

Hmm… according to google maps I’m about 3000 km from where I’m really sitting. I’m wondering if google have something wrong in database our Orange is mixing something in Poland
Alison Lowndes

November 29th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

Hilarious, I love your realtime, now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t blogging style .. give us a postcode (sorry zipcode) and we can all see where you are. Just out of interest how old are Google’s current sat images of NYC ? We can see you wave out the window if we wait X weeks right ?
Troy

November 29th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

I’d love this on my iPhone as well, but, it’s an application that must be installed on the device, and right now, you can’t install apps on the iPhone. Unless of course you hack it (jailbreak). The launch of the iPhone SDK in spring 2008 should unleash a new world of iPhone applications, and I’m sure Google will give us their locater map app.

For those who may not understand, the information about where you are comes from your cell phone–your phone knows approximate distances to the towers it can “see”. So the Google app is installed on the phone and the phone hardware allows the app to use the information. Right now, iPhone does not let us do this. Soon, my friends. Soon.
David Baxter

November 29th, 2007 at 9:52 pm

There was a recent presentation by a senior technical guy at either Ericsson or Nokia (Scandinavian handset company but can’t recall which one ) which showed that GPS actually only work less than 5% of the time for the typical user, because it requires line of sight to three satellites. Since cell phones typically spend significant amounts of time (with their owners) in buildings or in their owner’s pockets, then GPS is pretty much ineffective.

But wait – you say that if you take it out of your pocket you can find out your location. That’s certainly true, but it takes about 80 seconds from start-up to complete a triangulation. Not many people have that patience to find out where they are. Of course you always can shave a few seconds off this process, by keeping the GPS chip running, but then you have a major power drain issue.

This release by Google is seriously revolutionary. It opens the door to so many applications. I don’t need to know whether I’m 10 feet from the nearest Starbucks, I only need to know it’s within in a few blocks. Similarly I don’t need to know that my friend is standing behind me, I only need to know she’s within half a mile. For retail stores this is the closest thing to utopia. Finally bricks and mortar companies can leverage the internet/cellphone phenomenon because the location-vector has finally arrived!

Don’t get me wrong - GPS serves its purpose. For car navigation, vehicle tracking and cruise missiles it works like a champ. But you need to apply the right technology to the right problem.

And before you accuse me of being warm and fluffy, I’m not sitting on Google stock, nor have ever had any (idiot that I am!). I’ve been waiting for this capability for a long time and am just seriously impressed with how well this worked for me today on my non-GPS enabled Blackberry.
Mazzachre

November 30th, 2007 at 1:38 am

Now where is the function to track other people realtime??

I mean I would really like to track my girlfriends movements so I can check up on her all the time…

And to see when my boss moves from his office, so I can change programs to look effective…
jorge whorehay

November 30th, 2007 at 8:01 am

damn you google

old version V1.2.0.9 also on my treo 650.

what’s up with that?

since only 15% of mobile phones are blackberries, how about you get this thing worked out for the palm bretheren?
Tim

December 1st, 2007 at 8:26 am

Didn’t work for me. It was 180 miles off, showing a point in the Dallas area when I live in Abilene, TX. Maybe it only works in big cities.
abhi

December 17th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

hey…its working on mah sony ericsson phone….my model is w200i
kya kkaru??
Breckenridge Realtor

December 27th, 2007 at 9:01 am

Great, if only that can be integrated into the iPhone then I will never have to order another DVD for my car’s gps system. Otherwise my next phone is going to be a sony ericsson.