Google is expected to come after Apple’s AirTag preparing his personal tracker just in time for Google I/O 2023. These new trackers, codenamed Grogu after the popular Baby Yoda character from the mandalorian, they’re focused on harnessing the power of Android devices equipped with Google Play Services (3 billion of them) to create a personal tracking network so powerful it rivals Apple’s.
The bad part? Google is creating a personal tracking network so large it can rival Apple’s.
Digital trends
Google laid the groundwork for this set of features in Google Play Services updates detailed by a prolific developer and leaker Kuba Wojciechowski. These updates brought locator tag support to Google’s Fast Pair feature, and the company is also reportedly working with more device partners to build their own trackers.
While there is no timeline for the announcement of this technology, the aforementioned Google I/O conference in May seems like a good bet. And just like Apple before it, Google looks set to stumble and plunge headlong into controversy.
Apple’s AirTag knows controversy all too well
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To make these tracking tags infinitely more useful and powerful than the competition, Google and Apple take advantage of the large installed bases of billions of people on their platforms. With Apple’s Find My Network and the near-ubiquity of Google Play Services in locations where Apple is weak, purchasing an AirTag and a hypothetical Google tag could leave even more people vulnerable to stalkers and robbers.
Certainly, Google has a better chance of getting things right here. Apple AirTags have been around for a few years and the company has made a few mistakes that updates have corrected. Google could simply incorporate these corrections into their own tags and fix the problem immediately.
Google tracker can only make things worse
But it’s not like Google is learning from Apple’s mistakes in all cases. Sometimes the company reverts to more thoughtful technological approaches and replaces them with Apple’s implementations. Google could learn from them and at the end of the day come out with superior products that are more privacy focused, but more likely they won’t be.
Google has never been known for its privacy practices, and AirTags represent an untapped market for the company Android partners. At the end of the day, the tracking milk has already been spilled, the toothpaste can’t be put back in the tub and other tiresome metaphors of that sort.
Google could learn from Apple’s mistakes, but it’s more likely that they won’t.
The problem remains that any product that is good at tracking things is inherently good at tracking people. And Apple, of course, isn’t the only supplier of such devices, which include low-cost Bluetooth trackers.
Joe Maring/Digital Trends
It is not that Apple, Google or Amazon would immediately reduce the impermissible tracking possibilities to zero by eliminating their products. Instead, these companies are willingly making it cheaper, easier, and more convenient to secretly track people without their consent.
Whether it is legal or not is one question. Whether the value of finding a lost wallet or keys outweighs the potential or actual security concerns is another matter entirely.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn