Apple And Google Team Up For COVID-19 Contact Tracing Tech For iOS And Android

Apple and Google are rivals when it comes to a variety of products and services. However, if this COVID-19 virus outbreak is showing us, it’s that in order to beat the virus, many companies are switching up their operations and approaches to lend a helping hand. In this instance, it looks like in a rare partnership, Apple and Google are working together.

In a joint announcement posted on Google’s blog, it seems that both Apple and Google are working together to build COVID-19 contact tracing into iOS and Android respectively. For those unfamiliar, contact tracing is basically a technique where it tries to locate all the people a person infected with a disease might have come into contact with.

According to the announcement, “Apple and Google will be launching a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing. Given the urgent need, the plan is to implement this solution in two steps while maintaining strong protections around user privacy.”

This will work by using Bluetooth where as long as users are in range of each other, it will make an anonymous record of it. This means that should one person test positive for the virus, it will allow authorities to quickly determine who else might have been near that person to help quickly stop the spread.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, General, Medical
Tags: Android, Coronavirus, covid-19, Google, iOS