Google has introduced a number of new products around
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons in an effort to challenge Apple’s iBeacon ecosystem.
These
new products include a new open beacon format, tools and APIs for
building apps and services on top of beacons, and a new developer-centric
service for managing and monitoring large beacon deployments.
Google
has long been interested in Bluetooth beacons. For example, Google’s Nearby
project which is also launching as an API . While Nearby also uses other
signals (WiFi, audio, etc.), BLE beacons are clearly at the center of Google’s
efforts.
The
first of Google’s new beacon products is the Eddystone format. The company is
releasing the new format under the Apache 2.0 open source license on Github.
The new format is meant to give developers a more robust and extensible way for
working with beacons, as Google product manager Matthew Kulick told.
Google has already worked
with beacon hardware vendors like Bluvision, Estimote,Kontakt.io, Radius Networks and Signal360ato
build the Eddystone format into their devices. The new format is completely
platform agnostic and any existing
beacon can be made Eddystone-compatible with a firmware update.
Google is also launching two new APIs for
developers who want to use beacons for their apps. The Nearby API for
Android and iOS now makes it easier for apps to find and communicate with devices
and beacons that are well nearby. The Proximity Beacon API then takes this a
step further and helps developers associate a location and related data with
beacons. That data is stored on Google’s servers.
Google
also launched a new tool for beacon fleet management.
“We want to make it easier
to move from piloting your beacon-assisted apps to getting to scale,” Kulick
said.
This new service sits on
top of Google’s Eddystone telemetry framework and developers can then take this
data and build their own services and dashboards on top of the data they get
from this. But for now, Google won’t offer it’s own dashboard. Also the
company has no plans to charge for this service.
Google’s own products, will
also make use of this new technology. Google Now will also be able to use this
service to bring up contextual information, for example, when you are in a
restaurant, you will be able to see the menu in Google Now
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