Apple and Google Team Up for New ‘Contact Virus’ Technology

April 24, 2020

Apple and Google, the world’s two biggest tech companies, are joining forces to build an opt-in-contract-tracing tool using Bluetooth technology that could help public health officials and others track the spread of Covid-19 within the next several months. The ‘contact-tracing’ tool will allow people (if they opt in) to track the virus and voluntarily report if they have become infected. Of course, this useful tool raises privacy concerns. People would have to notify a public health app (if they chose) that they have the virus and then that would notify other people’s phones in close proximity that they have been exposed. However, the uniting of these two fierce rivals emphasizes the seriousness of this pandemic, “all of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems”. It’s a tech unification we need right now to return to everyday life. 

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