We’re not doing Google anymore.

Back in March, Long Zheng and I pushed out a Windows 7 Sensor that discovered your location using surrounding wireless access point data as a reference. For this to work properly, we needed a database that mapped geographical coordinates to access points. Without the resources needed to create our own super database, we decided to piggy back Google’s Location Services (GLS), the same technology used in Mozilla Firefox and Google Latitude. With its core easily accessible (via JSON) to the public, adoption was clean, easy and pretty darn fast.

Days before our 1.0 release in March, we touched base with Google in hopes to stir up interest and to ensure the GLS API was there to stay (for a while), on the heels of Gears’ transitory news. After a few exchanges, with a middle man, we were passed a note, paraphrased as such: The Terms of Service for the Gears API doesn’t allow for this type of usage.

Confused? We were, because we’re not using nor touched Google Gears. Reading the Google Gears TOS, we discovered this nugget of evil:

5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google.

To conform to the TOS – despite its confusing scope of applicability – Google wanted us to funnel our access through their deprecated Gears product (or ask for special permission). More focused on pushing out Geosense 1.0, we ceased communication with Google and simply put our blinders on. “They wouldn’t know any better, with their hundred million queries per day, pffft.”

We pushed out Geosense 1.0. 1.1. And finally 1.2, fixing some major issues.

Read more: Within Windows

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