Apple, Google to create contact tracing technology to fight coronavirus spread

Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Friday that they will work together to create contact tracing technology that aims to slow the spread of the coronavirus by allowing users to opt into a system that catalogs other phones they have been near.

The two Silicon Valley companies make the world’s dominant smartphone operating systems for iPhones and Android devices.

They will work together on technology that will allow mobile devices to trade information via Bluetooth connections to alert people when they have been in close proximity with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, the sometimes deadly respiratory disease associated with the novel coronavirus.