Google is reportedly working on a competitor to the Find My network that Apple built to help people find lost devices that are near one of the hundreds of millions of Macs, iPads, or iPhones used every day.
9to5Google reported that Google’s network, which appears to be built on top of the existing Find My Device utility built into Android, would use an API called Spot that it discovered in the latest Google Play services beta. The report suggested Google also plans to use the Spot brand for an app based on the API.
Apple has been working on the Find My network for over a decade. The company introduced a service called Find My iPhone (or Find My Mac) in 2010, released a social location-sharing tool called Find My Friends in 2011, and then combined those services into a single utility called Find My in 2019.
Find My rose to new prominence when Apple expanded the network to include third-party devices on April 7 before announcing its long-awaited AirTag accessory on April 20. The company said at the time that the Find My network uses “hundreds of millions of Apple devices” to help people find their lost items.
Apple says that the Find My network and AirTags strive to preserve the privacy of their users by relying on end-to-end encryption, temporary Bluetooth signal identifiers, and anonymous reporting that doesn’t reveal which participating device reported the missing item’s approximate location to the rest of the network.
It seems that Google plans to offer similar protections. 9to5Google said that “basic details about how [Spot] works include the use of encryption and a key that is rotated every few hours.” The API also suggested that Android device owners will be able to opt out of participating in the new Find My Device network.
The information revealed by this Google Play services beta only says this Find My Device network will allow Android owners to help find “other people’s devices,” according to the report, but it’s not clear if that assistance will be limited to existing products or if Google plans to compete with the AirTag as well.
