• Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    28 days ago

    It literally was though. Not a military intelligence tool, but a big business intelligence one.

    Niantic was founded by Google and their first product, Field Trip, and their first game, Ingress (a much better-designed game than Pokémon Go, btw) were pretty obviously about gaining geolocation data for Google to improve their products like Maps and Shopping.

    • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      28 days ago

      Oh man, Ingress was such a better game. I got slightly obsessed with it for a year or two. I had my entire state covered for a couple of days, before one of the nodes or whatever was broken.

    • Kalkaline @leminal.space
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      28 days ago

      Even now they have tools like Scaniverse that create 3D stitches of the space around you that they’ve incorporated into the game. And yeah, Ingress was and is a better game, even if the new UI is annoying.