At the Google press briefing on Chrome yesterday — here are my SEL thoughts — I got a chance to ask a few questions, one of which was whether Chrome incorporated “location awareness” in any way.
While I’m not 100% sure I made myself clear and was completely understood, Sundar Pichai, product VP at Google, during the Q&A session, said that it was not in the current version of Chrome but would be integrated in the future.
Obviously, location-awareness in the browser (relying on triangulation or another methodology) would make all sorts of passive content delivery and location targeting possible — not unlike what’s going on with Sprint’s XOHM.
I’ll be following up with Pichai to discuss the issue in more depth.
September 3, 2008 at 1:22 pm |
Thanks.
Wouldn’t location awareness disrupt local media?
September 3, 2008 at 1:26 pm |
Not necessarily. While it might prompt more Google usage it wouldn’t be limited to Google.
September 3, 2008 at 1:54 pm |
Further disrupt, if all PCs were location aware… I guess theoretically local media would continue to control their respective share of media spend.
September 3, 2008 at 3:05 pm |
Wow, Greg, here I was all keyed into the search suggest tie-in and I didn’t even think about the location sniffing. It doesn’t look like much data is going back and forth between Chrome and Google in general though: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-communication/
September 3, 2008 at 3:07 pm |
None according to Google. They know that would fuel the “big brother” fears and deter users from adopting.
September 3, 2008 at 6:30 pm |
Glad to learn an individual’s right to privacy continue to be respected by Google and their browser Chrome.
September 3, 2008 at 10:28 pm |
I have to say I played around with Chrome for hours last night and was utterly unimpressed. Not only was there nothing to wow me, the privacy issues they failed to address and the fact that Google is essentially big brother has me shying away from it.