Your Location 'Extremely Valuable' To Google 164
An anonymous reader writes "Google recently wrote off concerns about its mobile devices sending precise user location data back to its servers, but recently uncovered emails illustrate that user location is instrumental in its strategy. Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, wrote to Larry Page, founder and now CEO, explaining that location data from mobile phones was 'extremely valuable to Google,' especially given the privacy blow-up concerning its Street View cars at the time."
Re:I'd rather Google than Apple or Facebook (Score:4, Interesting)
Meh, it only takes a couple of seconds to configure Kismet (which apparently was one of the used applications) to only log the networks information (E/BSSID, channel, encryption, geographic location from GPS, etc) without logging the actual packages. And it doesn't take more CPU than logging everything.
They are broadcasting it, why shouldn't they listen? Never understood that whole issue. Now someone breaks into my house, cuts an ethernet cable, splices in a sniffer, then I'll be justifiably annoyed. But listening to a broadcast I'm intentionally transmitting out to the world as they drive by? Who cares.