What Google (and possibly Yahoo!) can do with VW (and possibly others)

I do know that Google is working with VW to provide 3D maps of routes and (realtime?) traffic information etc. Autoblog reports here. How they plan to provide wireless connectivity remains a mystery.

But what would be a cool social app. could be this… The navigation system has access to the speed of the car… which along with its location it shares with a central server. Now think about it… given this collective information we have absolutely real-time information of all freeways in the country! Within a few minutes of an accident taking place, car speeds around it would slow down hence warning other drivers to avoid taking that route. I don’t really know how current radio based traffic capability navigation systems work… but this would be really cool.

There are privacy concerns for sure but as you can imagine people have an incentive here to share…. since they depend on other people sharing the same data. Yahoo! or Google could easily tie up with car manufacturers and wireless providers alike to provide this kind of capability. People who share their location and speed information may get a discount in their monthly charges (another incentive!!)

Don’t know if this is a realistic project…. but to me it seems very much possible in the coming future.