• Cnet News.com, Thursday, August 14, 2008 11:15 AM

Cnet's Charles Cooper is a little freaked out by Fire Eagle, Yahoo's new geolocation service. While third parties line up to cut deals, Cooper says the concept of a service that follows you around to tell your friends where you are at any given time is kind of creepy. "Sometimes it's comforting just being off the grid," he says. "I don't think I missed something growing up in a Fire Eagle-less world, and I'm in no hurry to change now."

However, from a business perspective, Cooper says Yahoo probably has a winner here. "This is another signpost of a future where we choose from a panoply of location-based services," he says, pointing out that already, more than 50 services make use of Fire Eagle technology.

We know what you're thinking: geotargeted mobile spam, right? Let's not be so pessimistic. Spam didn't work for e-mail, and so it's not going to work for the mobile phone, either. Thankfully, Fire Eagle is permission-based, and while there may be a few dodgy experiments, useful services will also emerge as a result of geolocation technology.

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