Google Pushes New Find My Device Network Launch to End of Year

Google announced a brand new Find My Device network back at Google I/O as their next-generation lost device locator. This new network would move beyond just tracking your lost phone and would expand to include things like headphones or other objects you might attach a Bluetooth tracker to.

The power of this new network will come from the billions of Android devices being used throughout the world. All of those devices will create a network that can ping lost devices in a crowdsourced way that is still private. When you aim to track a missing device, the pings sent around the network are end-to-end encrypted to ensure your privacy and so that Google can’t use the data in any way other than to help you find missing items. And that’s how Bluetooth devices like headphones or trackers can be found at almost any time.

The launch of this new Find My Device network was supposed to happen this summer, but the situation has since changed. In a blog post today, Google explained that they are still working in partnership with Apple to finalize the specification for unwanted tracker alerts that will be tied to this new network. It sounds like they need apple to implement parts of this with iOS.

So at this time, they are pushing rollout to the “end of this year.”

We’ll be sure to update you when we get closer to a launch.