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Where are you? That's not just a metaphysical question, but increasingly a geopolitical challenge that is putting tech giants like Apple and Alphabet in a tough position.
Countries around the world, including China, Japan, India and the United Kingdom plus the European Union are exploring, testing and deploying satellites to build out their own positioning capabilities.
That's a massive change for the United States, which for decades has had a practical monopoly on determining the location of objects through its Global Positioning System (GPS), a military service of the Air Force built during the Cold War that has allowed commercial uses since mid-2000 (for a short history of GPS, check out this article, or for the comprehensive history, here's the book-length treatment).
[...] Now, a number of other countries want to reduce their dependency on the U.S. and get those economic benefits. Perhaps no where is that more obvious than with China, which has made building out a global alternative to GPS a top national priority. Its Beidou (北斗 – "Big Dipper") navigation system has been slowly building up since 2000, mostly focused on providing service in Asia.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/the-gps-wars-have-begun/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @06:31AM
Yes, I know. The U.K. is the one that decided to "take his ball and go home" as it had the referendum and hit the big red exit button.