Unlike Samsung, Tile, and other non-Apple competitors, Google has a secret weapon that could quickly make it the No. Since then, Samsung and now apparently Google have decided to jump into the market. Tile has been around for 10 years now, but it wasn't until Apple cloned the idea with AirTags that the idea took off with Big Tech companies.
Tile Bluetooth trackers are a great way to find car keys, luggage, and whatever else you frequently lose. Why else would it add Bluetooth tracker emulation options to its public developer tools? Google handles the Fast Pair functionality for the host OS (Android), so the dev console is only for third-party Bluetooth devices. It suggests that Google is planning to build a Bluetooth tracker ecosystem for Grogu and let third-party hardware join the party. Google's Fast Pair developer console is for third -party devices, though, so seeing a 'locator tag' category pop up at the same time as Grogu would be an awfully big coincidence. Fast Pair is Google's API for quickly detecting and pairing to nearby Bluetooth devices-it shows a pop-up on the screen rather than making people dig through the settings menu.
Another interesting wrinkle is that Esper's Mishaal Rahman recently posted about a 'locator tag' option landing in Google's Fast Pair developer console.
