Google emails highlight value of location data

Larry Page’s Memorial Day weekend email was terse — "Can I get a response on this?" — but the scramble it set off among top Google (GOOG) executives on a Saturday afternoon in 2010 illustrates the critical importance of the data smartphones use to track their location.

With obvious concern, Page had pasted an article in the email saying Motorola planned to use a competitor’s location services — not Google’s — in its Android phones. A detailed memo quickly came back to Page. In it, Android chief Andy Rubin and other Google executives emphasized that collecting location data from consumers’ smartphones was "extremely valuable to Google," and detailed the trouble the company was having with data collection in the wake of a privacy blowup involving Google’s Street View cars.

By Mike Swift

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