Ed Parsons is the Geospatial Technologist of Google and he has noted for Geospatial services to belcome really mainstream, the ability to determine a users/devices location needs to be a standard function. Windows 7 announced that it would include the capability, the iPhone and gPhone already do. In a recent post Parsons speculates that All eyes then (will be) on Macworld in January, I would be surprised if we don’t… see a location API as a new feature of Snow Leopard.

With location awareness moving towards the mainstream, all of local will be affected. Ads will be more targeted and content can be more relevant. Google can make search even more personalized having reasonable confidence that if you search on the word “Dentist” that you are looking locally rather than for a wikipedia article.

With the next versions of the major operating system including location awareness, the leading smart phones including it, Firefox soon to offer it as well, it will have widespread availability within 12-24 months. It will have a long term, permanent affect on what we call local.