Today, Charles Wiles, product manager of the Google Mobile Team, announced some pretty sweet news, the Gears Geolocation API for all laptop WiFi users:

I am thrilled to announce that today we have enhanced the Gears Geolocation API so that developers can now securely locate users to within 200m accuracy in major desktop browsers in hundreds of cities around the world. Whether your users are Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox or (soon) Opera users, you can now automatically deliver an experience that is tailored to their current location.

The original purpose of the Gears Geolocation API was to make it easy for developers to deliver location enabled web sites on mobile phones. However, the team realized laptop users would benefit from location enabled web sites too.

Keir Clark gives a good example how this technology can be applied:

Independent Television News have created a news map that delivers news based on the user’s location. The map uses the Google Gears Geolocation API to determine the user’s location and then serves up news for that region.

As Stephen Shankland mentions on Webware:

Two weeks ago, Mozilla released a Firefox plug-in called Geode that uses a similar Wi-Fi technology, from Skyhook Wireless, to give a user’s location. That service is being built into Firefox 3.1, too, and will eventually be able to use other methods, including GPS or presumably Gears, to retrieve location information.

The Gears Geolocation API is completely free for developers. However, the location-tracking technology raises some concerns over privacy issues. First, the API will not record user location, but third-party Website can and probably will. To remedy to this problem, “Gears will always tell a user when your site wants to access their location for the first time and the user can either allow or deny your site permission.“

The geo-based Web is turning into a major trend thanks to the Internet juggernauts’ investment in location-based technologies. The Gears Geolocation API is an amazing opportunity for site owners to include geo-marketing in their content optimization strategy. So make your marks in the geo-Web, build maps, lots of them, and own as many markers as possible, because more and more, this is how people are finding you online.