Apple and Google yesterday announced an unprecedented alliance in a highly competitive environment in the tech industry and revealed that they are working together on two projects to use people mobility data in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both companies plan to add new software to phones that would make it easier to use Bluetooth wireless technology to locate people who may have been infected with coronavirus carriers.

The idea is to help national governments implement applications for so-called "contact tracking," which run on iPhones and Android phones alike. The technology works by taking advantage of short-range Bluetooth signals.

Contact tracking apps would collect a record from other phones they approached.
Such data can be used to alert others that they may have been infected by known carriers of the new coronavirus.
But this would only work in cases where the owners of the phones have installed the applications and have agreed to share data with public health authorities.

It is an approach that has already been carried out in Asian countries such as China and South Korea and that raises serious questions about the privacy of user information, something that Apple and Google say they have been able to mitigate through the use of Bluetooth (a less invasive technology than, for example, geolocation) and the "voluntary" nature of the programs.

It should be noted that this system would allow moving around the world because there would be a single global protocol, and with the collaboration of governments, users would not need in this way to go to the App Store or Play Store to search for and download anything, an app on Covid -19 would appear on your mobile phone after an update to alert you to possible contagions, and the user will be the one who must voluntarily choose to participate in the project, and that "privacy, transparency and consent are of the utmost importance in this effort "against the Covid-19.

According to the announcement of both companies, in May the tool that will allow Android and iPhone applications to talk to each other will be ready. The traceability API based on Bluetooth technology will take "a few more months", but until then governments and medical organizations will be able to use their own systems to determine the location of users and their possible contact with infected people.