In the more recent news surrounding tech giants Google and Apple, we saw a rare showing of solidarity as both these companies are now joining hands in an attempt to fight off coronavirus. Both will help with the aid of the so-called “contract tracing” by helping coronavirus apps form a location history of all the individuals that have been infected.
This will be achieved via an application going by the name of programming interface (API) that both companies will introduce very soon – and a rigorous method will soon follow.
In theory, the app would work as an individual would first download one of the coronavirus apps as well as the other health apps that will actually work with both Google as well Apple’s upcoming API – which of course is compatible between both Android as well as iOS phones. The app would then track the movement of the particular individual and if they contract coronavirus, they can then give such information to one of such apps.
Via Google and Apple’s API, the app will then proceed on to notify any individual that has been near the person who has already been infected that they too might have been exposed to the virus.
Both the companies have also claimed that these contact tracing methods will indeed keep “user privacy and security central to the design.” In any case, the API that will indeed go on to enable this will actually arrive sometime in May – in accordance with what Google and Apple have said.
It is also planned by both the tech giants that they will take contact tracing one step further with the enablement of a “broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform” achieved by building the previously described functionality directly into both Android as well as iOS. Theoretically, one would have to imagine that this method should actually work even if people don’t have the required apps at their disposal.
