It’s rare, but occasionally multi-billion-dollar megacorps do something altruistic and unambiguously positive. Take Google’s Earthquake Alert system for Android. In 2020 the company started sending near-instant alerts of an impending earthquake to users on the west coast of the US. Now it’s available in all 50 states and all U.S. territories, too.
Earthquake Alerts use distributed data from the gyroscopic sensors in millions of Android phones to detect simultaneous vibrations, spotting an earthquake in real time and sending an alert to all the surrounding phones if something above a 3 on the MMI scale is registered. At 4.5 or above it becomes a more intense “Take Action” alert is sent. In the best case scenario that should give people a few seconds to seek cover or get out of immediately dangerous situations.
In California, Oregon, and Washington, where earthquakes are much more common, the system also sends alerts with the help of the ShakeAlert system from the US Geological Survey.
In addition to the U.S. mainland, Alaska, and Hawaii, the system is now operational in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands, among others. According to Google’s blog post, the tech is already active in 97 other countries and territories, though Japan, Indonesia, and China are notably absent from the list.