Tile, which is being eaten alive by Big Tech, hasn’t plugged in to either one of these networks yet, but Google’s blog post says Tile will eventually join Find My Device. Google is supposedly planning its own Bluetooth tracker at some point in the future, too.

Source: Bluetooth tags for Androids 3 billion-strong tracking network are here

Tile basically invented this product from what I recall, but they had no real “moat.” It kind of seemed like they did… until they didn’t. It’s very smart for Apple to have thought up using the install base of iOS to out-Tile Tile (and then for Google to follow suit), but I sure hope that doesn’t mean all the Tile trackers out there become useless because they go out of business and the Tile app eventually stops working.

And here I am considering buying an Apple AirTag even though I don’t own an iOS device, just to have redundant tracking. I guess you can set them up on Android? If something’s important enough, maybe it’s worth the $25-30 to have an additional chance at finding that again. They’ve done something right here, and that’s coming from someone who has been a hard sell on Apple devices for quite some time after having been a Mac/iPhone user for years.