Firefox 3.5 and Fennec aboard Google's location service

From CNET News.com: When Google Labs released its experimental browser toolbar with their My Location finder for Internet Explorer last week, we wondered (read: heckled) why it wasn't available for Firefox. Now we know. Instead of being added on through a toolbar or extension, it was intended to be built in. So, on Thursday, Mozilla announced a new feature for Firefox 3.5 beta 4, and for Fennec, the code name for the mobile version of Firefox: Google's geolocation service. Like the toolbar with My Location, Mozilla's opt-in engine will use your position to return more focused search results across the Web.

Here's how it works. When you browse to a page that requests to know your location, you accept or decline. Declining does nothing, but accepting delivers your Wi-Fi access point or IP address details to Google Location Services, using an encrypted SSL connection (https). Google can then return search results for your area. Using the classic example, a search for "movie theaters" or the weather will bring up local listings without you having to type in your city or ZIP code.

Privacy is a key concern here. With many computer users going out of their way to erase their Internet tracks, handing them over for the sake of saving a few keystrokes may seem foolhardy. To that end, Mozilla has posted in an FAQ section that "Firefox does not track or remember your location between sessions, never sends your location to any third party, and never sends it to any of Mozilla's servers."

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