Google Chrome knows where you are
By Stuart Turton
Posted on 5 Mar 2010 at 12:37
Google has released the first version of Chrome featuring its geolocation API, allowing websites to pinpoint the user's location.
The controversial Geolocation API is part of the HTML 5 specification and has already found its way into Firefox 3.5.
It allows browsers to query the user's current location using GPS, Wi-Fi access points, or mobile base station triangulation. This information can then be communicated to websites, allowing Facebook and Twitter to geotag status updates, for example.
The feature has been rolled out in the unstable developer build of Chrome, which is released nightly, often with untried new features or bug fixes that Google isn't comfortable folding into the stable release.
The feature is switched off by default and anybody looking to make use of the Geolocation API will need to enable it manually through the command line, and even then they will be prompted every time a website requests the information.
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