Santa Barbara, Calif. — Google on Thursday announced in a post on the Google Mobile blog that it has rolled out a location-aware search for Windows Mobile users, in order to provide relevant search results with the release of “Search with My Location,” a reality.
Google’s recently revealed mobile-search technology, which is powered by a new Gears Geolocation API, released a couple of weeks ago that “makes searching for nearby businesses on Windows Mobile phones both faster and easier,” the members of Google’s mobile team wrote.
The concept is that software determines your location information without requiring user input. This would enable you to execute searches faster, and get the results you need in a jiffy.
For example, when you search for “pizza,” you get restaurants near your current location first. You will no longer require inserting the zip code or city name to your search to get local results.
Previously, when a user accessed Google.com from the Windows Mobile phone’s browser and executed a local search, the results was tailored to the last location you have entered, noted Google software engineers Terry Van Belle and Tim Cox in a new blog.
Now, according to the company, capitalizing on the Gears Geolocation API, Search with My Location approximates your location based on Cell ID technology already employed by Google Maps for Mobile, it figures out where you are from that information, or GPS — depending on the phone you are using and displays businesses in that area.
So, if you are searching for the best Italian restaurants in your neighborhood, you can input “Italian restaurants” into the Search field, and it will return a list of Italian restaurants around your location. But the company says that it goes beyond businesses and restaurants. Google said that if you wish to know the weather forecast of your current location, simply type in “weather” and it will return the weather for your area. Reducing the amount of text entry means faster searches.
The improvement will convert your phone into a guidebook to your immediate locale, as Google put it. The system is currently only available in the US and UK but you can expect them to roll out in more countries in the near future.
The service only works with Internet Explorer Mobile for Windows Mobile devices that support cell-ID or GPS, and does raise privacy issues, but, ultimately it is a real step toward a location-aware future. Here’s the list of compatible phones. And do not make too much fuss if your phone is not listed since Google is working with vendors to add support for future phones.
Google says estimates based on cell-tower information are calculated much faster than those based on GPS. And unlike GPS, the technology “works reliably indoors and does not drain your phone battery at the rate that GPS does,” noted Google software engineer Mike Chu in a blog written late last year.
In order to quash any concerns about potential privacy issues, Google stated that, “We take your privacy seriously and have designed Search with My Location so that it does not associate your location with any personally identifiable information, even if you are logged in.” According to Google, it would not send your location until you ‘opt in’ and you can always ‘opt out’.
Google has just launched a free mobile app that will enable Blackberry users to initiate search queries without having to wait for the browser to load, said Goggle’s mobile team. In addition to allowing searches to be launched with a minimum number of keystrokes, the new mobile app provides Blackberry users with easy access to Maps, Gmail, News, and other Google resources.
So, keeping all the privacy concerns aside, we can look forward to the convenience and power of location-awareness — and the controversy of Google always knowing where you are.