Britepic for Blogger

Google Eyeing Location-Based Mashups, but Says Privacy Is Paramount

This sort of location-based aggregation can help move applications such asGoogle Latitude, Google buzz for mobile and services from startups such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Loopt from the fringe to the mainstream. 

Lee called such location mashup scenarios very compelling, noting, "I think it's something that Google would love to offer users. What's important in scenarios where users are looking for information between different sources is that you're transparent for end users."

There would have to be a mutual understanding between the friend providing the recommendation from an app and the recipient of the recommendation for this to work.

"You also have to mitigate the creepy factor. A lot of services like that are part amazing and compelling and part creepy. If you are very up front and transparent then the user understands how that info was derived and it removes most of the creepiness. Then you have to decide to make it opt-in or opt-out, you have to give the user a choice to be able to say 'No, I don't want to be part of this.' You have to have very specific controls to mitigate the creepy factor."

Yes, folks, Google thinks very seriously about user privacy despite what privacy watchdogs allege. Google tests its own software long before it releases it to mitigate any creepy factor.

For example, Google only launched Location History for its Latitude friend-finding app last November, but Lee has been using Location History since the Latitude app launched in February 2009.

Lee described his reaction: