Nearby Notifications – Nearby is a Google proprietary solution for Android smartphones that allows users to discover nearby devices and send relevant information without an app. When a smartphone is in the range of an Eddystone beacon, the Physical Web compatible browser (Google Chrome) scans and detects the packet and the link you’ve set is displayed. Physical Web notifications – Beaconstac broadcasts an Eddystone URL packet with a link you’ve set up. Services on the device such as Google Chrome or Nearby Notifications scan for and display these Eddystone URLs after passing them through a proxy.

Beacons that support the Eddystone protocol broadcast a URL that can be viewed by anyone with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone whether they have an app installed or not. Eddystone, Physical Web, and Nearby Notifications The working dynamicsĮddystone is an open communication protocol which was developed by Google with Android users in mind. While we await more information from the Google Chrome team on the removal of Physical Web, here is a full update on what this means for us proximity marketing solution providers. A Google employee took to Google Groups to announce that the Nearby notifications would be temporarily suppressed in the upcoming release of Google Play Services, as they were working on improvements. Back in October 2016, Google did a similar thing with Nearby notifications.

It is too early to say whether Google has temporarily suppressed it or the team has better substitutes coming up in the future.

We noticed today that in the latest update of the Google Chrome app on iOS and Android support for the Physical Web has been removed. Is Physical Web support temporarily suppressed or gone forever? What just happened with the latest Chrome update?

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