What is Trusted Contacts?
The company has launched the Trusted Contacts app back in 2016 for users to share their location with their friends and family. The app was initially made available only for Android users but it was also launched for the iPhone users. Through the app users were not only allowed to add phone numbers of selected contacts but also share location with those contacts if a user felt he needs help. The company has notified about the move to its users through an email who use location sharing with trusted contacts.
What has happened?
The company informed the users about how the location sharing has been integrated into Google Maps, and so the Trusted Contacts app isn’t required anymore. The app is no longer available to download on the app stores but those who already have it installed on their phones can use it until December 1, 2020.
Users have also been asked to download trusted contacts from this page until the given deadline.
“If you have created trusted contacts, you can download them from the trusted contacts page until December 1, 2020. After that date, the Trusted Contact app will no longer work and your trusted contacts will be unable to see the live location you are sharing with them from the app,” Google said in the email.
Those who have trusted contacts added can download them from this link.
What is the reason behind killing this app?
Trusted Contacts is the latest location sharing apps that the company has killed after Google Latitude and Google+ Location Sharing. The move is aimed to take a more cleaner approach from Google to focus all such features on its Maps app. It is following a similar approach for its productivity apps which recently rebranded to Google Workspace from G Suite. This will kill Hangouts and replaced it with Google Chat. This transition is expected to take place in the second half of 2021.