Thursday, October 29, 2009

Google Navigation = I'm Getting a Droid

I've been sitting on the iPhone:Android fence for a while now, but no longer.  The impending release of Google's100% free, absolutely rocking Navigation System has tipped me in the direction of the Motorola Droid.




The new service is an awesome demonstration of the potent products that can spring from Google's rich, structured data core.  Could the company monetize this directly?  Absolutely.  But they won't because it's even more important for Google to 1) encourage Android phone purchases by offering this amazing feature (expect this to last a short while then migrate to iPhone as well), 2) popularize a new platform that sucks in structured data (much like the free and similarly sweet 1-800-GOOG-411) and 3) generate good will toward the G-Brand.

Expect increasingly more babies from Google's fertile data womb in the near future. 

About Alvis Brigis

My Photo
Alvis Brigis is a media specialist and futurist residing in Los Angeles. Most recently, he was Executive Producer for The Future of Facebook, the first Open Foresight project to be funded and released, and Story Producer on History Channel’s Invention USA. He’s produced and written for TV networks including NBC, VH1, THC and Sundance Channel. He co-founded Future Scanner (a prediction harvesting tool), Swarmado (a mobile content-sharing app for events) and has developed a variety of forward-looking startups. Alvis serves on the advisory board of Acceleration Studies Foundation and blogs about the social side of accelerating change at Social Node. He’s also an avid sci-fi and comedy writer.