The new Google Mobile Maps is quite amazing, with its LocateMe function. In practice, I’m finding it somewhat frustrating, and I’ve appeared at the edges and outside the error boundary it displays on the map. It’s great, however, for getting you to the right part of the world to then pivot round a search request.
The question that surprisingly no-one is asking is – where did they get the data? The main stumbling block for cell ID based location has been the lack of an open database containing this information.
There are possibilities:
a. they did a deal with the operators and bought access to their databases
If Google have done this, they’ve pulled off the deals of the century, given the international reach. The operators consider this commercially-sensitive information, and also liked selling this data to users for 40p a pop.
b. they used a database created by someone else
There are only a few apps I can think of that have a database like this – the ContextWatcher research project, and Jaiku (but the Jaiku database of location lookup doesn’t include precise co-ordinates, just location names entered by the users). I’ve not seen a comprehensive enough database of this.
c. Google are collecting the data themselves
Two possibilities here – the cars they drive around collecting info for Google Maps also collect cell ID data, or they’re using customers to collect data. My suspicion is that enough Blackberry and N95 users were using Google Maps v1, with GPS enabled and recording corresponding Cell IDs, to collect enough data points in a few months to make this possible. It’s so hard to tell what data is being sent to Google when it’s making map requests, and the data is so small it seems viable to collect it this way.
I’m not too much of a conspiracy theorist, and believe if they are collecting this info, it’s only to make the whole maps experience better. This information could be tied to your IMEI or phone number, at most. This interesting thing will be when they hopefully tie together the web version of Google Maps and the mobile version (think My Maps automatically transferred to your phone). Then your Google ID would be tied to your in-the-world location requests. And presumably stored, for your own context and history.
Although I’m not 100% convinced by The Register they’re claiming that people were paid to drive around and collect this info. Having collected this data for my own use in the past I’ve found that multiple visits help refine the data, but a single drive-by on main roads can capture a lot. Also using the LAC portion of the cellid gives you a regional answer almost immediately (assuming you know the bounds), and is something that’s probably overlooked. Roughly is better than nothing at all. And don’t start me off on reverse IP address block registry lookups.
Of course, there’s d) they got a login for Yahoo! Fireeagle and iterated through cell IDs, harvesting the geocoded responses ;-)
— crouchingbadger 3.12.07 #
I agree, it’s probably a mixture. It doesn’t explain why it works so well in Helsinki, and other locales where the Googlebots won’t have driven.
In fact, in that Register article Google mentions that it collects GPS and Cell ID information. I just wish they were being a bit more upfront about it.
I’m not convinced by The Register either, I’m with their fourth commenter says:
“An expensive process, pahh! They collected the info from version 1 users with out them knowing!”
Especially if this newer second version is doing that collection as well. When not using GPS at home and at work, the blue dot has been surprisingly close to my real location, even with a large 1700m radius. And I have used v1 in both locations with GPS. Oh, the work dot isn’t where a drive-by would be, it’s in the company car park, not along the large busy nearby.
I read reports somewhere of some operators switching their Cell IDs around to mess this up. Can’t remember where though.
Just thought, a good way to do drive-by collection would be to get taxi drivers to do it :)
This cell-id business is what got me so excited about Jaiku in the first place. I’ve been trying to find out how to get this info since…my question now is, will Google open this data up somehow so we can build mobile mashups with it? Or will it be MyMaps only? Also it’s interesting that MobileMaps works nicely in Helsinki, but didn’t work at all in the center of CPH. Not enough N95 users there?
The non-GPS location option includes a T&C requirement to send info back to Google, so they’re obviously using user data to build on what they’ve gathered already…
Works well in Helsinki eh? Jaiku collects cell ID and GPS data. Could Google have made use of that already?
The, ahem, “spunky” (nasal?) video they have over on the GMM site does say “and the service gets better the more you use it”...
http://google.com/gmm/mylocation.html?hl=en
— Boris Anthony 4.12.07 #
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