SimpleGeo Makes Location Data Free, Complicates Smartphone Tracking Worries

SimpleGeo has placed 20 million locations for "places" in the public domain to drive developers of location-based service apps. The thing is that data, combined with location-tracking smartphones, could spark unsavory uses too. In a direct challenge to Foursquare's effort to become the "Rosetta stone" for location-data on identifiable geo-located "places," SimpleGeo is trying to spark a revolution in location-based app writing by making the data for 20 million places available on its servers under the Creative Commons Zero license--essentially placing the data for free into the public domain. It's a bold move, because platforms like Foursquare and Yelp, which rely on venue data tied to precise geo-locations, have to struggle to build up their own internal places database over time, relying on multiple database entries from their userbase to create a reliable table of locations.