Google's My Location Comes to Desktops

Google's My Location Comes to Desktops

Techtree News Staff, Jul 13, 2009 1248 hrs IST

Needs a supported browser for it to work

If you have been using Google Maps on your phone, you might be aware of its cool My Location feature that pin points your location (usually within meters, if your phone is GPS enabled). The feature has now made it to the desktop version of Google Maps, according to a recent post on the Google Maps blog.

While the location awareness of your desktop might be quite poor as compared with your cellphone, it still is a fun feature addition. My Location needs a supported browser for it to work. It uses the W3C Geolocation API, which is supported by Google Chrome 2.0 and Firefox 3.5. IE users will need to install Gears for the feature to work.

It is also slightly tricky to actually find out where and how to activate the My Location feature. If you tried and didn't find it yet, let me explain.

To activate the feature, you will need to click the button in the top left corner of the map between the map zoom control and the map pan control. The image below should clear up things anyway. Once activated, Google Maps will center the map to your approximate location. If your location can be determined accurately enough, Google Maps will show it on the map with a blue circle (as shown in the Mobile version).