Google to shutter Trusted Contacts

Google will discontinue support for its location-sharing app Trusted Contacts from December 1, 2020.

The tech giant has already pulled the app from its Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

“Trusted Contacts won’t be supported after December 1, 2020. If the app is installed on your device, you can continue to use it until then. To share your location with others, try Location Sharing in Google Maps,” reads a notice on Trusted Contacts app’s website.

Facility on Google Maps

Google has said that the app is being pulled off since the functionality that it had been built for has now been built into its navigation app Google Maps itself. It is transitioning users to the Google Maps app. Users can download their trusted contacts on to the app and set up location sharing on Google Maps.

One drawback, however, is unlike the Trusted Contacts app, users will be required to actively broadcast their location in Maps. For Trusted Contacts, the app would automatically share a user’s last known location when they do not respond to their contact’s status update request.

In maps, a user will have to actively broadcast their location.

Optimising apps

Google, in a bid to optimise its location sharing solutions had scrapped its Google Latitude and Google+ Location Sharing earlier.

The tech giant is working on optimising its apps that provide similar solutions by folding them into a single solution. It had recently announced an integrated solution called Google Workplace which combines apps including Gmail, Google Maps and Google Drive.

Last week it had announced the transitioning of users from Hangouts to Chats.

Also read: Google to begin migrating users from Hangouts to Chat starting next year

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