Google Calls Location Data 'Extremely Valuable'

Surfboards lean against a wall at the Google office in Santa Monica, 
California. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Fox News - Google's collection of location information from millions of mobile devices and personal computers is "extremely valuable" to the company's future business, according to an email written by a Google product manager last year.

That email and others, which are part of a public filing in a lawsuit against Google last year, shed new light on the company's thinking about the need to gather location-related data. 

Such information is essential for a growing number of mobile applications and websites to function properly, the emails indicate. It is also useful for companies such as Google — whose Android software powers millions of phones—that want to offer consumers advertisements that are tailored to their locations, a new frontier for online ads.

The disclosure of the internal emails follows a series of other revelations about location data gathered by Google and Apple. The revelations prompted the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to schedule a hearing on May 10 to discuss the companies' practices.     Read More