In coordination with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Google announced the launch of AMBER Alerts. Added to Google’s Public Alerts platform, the Public alerts are designed to bring users emergency alerts if relevant to you. AMBER Alerts’ aim is to help bring abducted children home safely.
An example of how AMBER Alerts will be displayed in Search
Depending on your location, when searching from Google or using Google Maps from the desktop and/or mobile, you’ll see AMBER Alert(s) if you search for information on a location where a child has been abducted and alerts were issued.
Google hope that the increased availability of the alerts will help in the safe recover of children, whatever the situation for them going missing.
AMBER Alerts will provide as much information on the abducted children as possible and will update information surrounding the cases as they are made available. This could include the vehicle details that the children were taken in, or information around the alleged abductors.
Google's Public Alerts platform showing information for users around Hurricane Sandy
At present, only the US is being provided with this service as the AMBER Alert Program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies and others to involve the community in the most serious child-abduction cases. And with recent abductions cases in the UK, Google are working closely with Missing Children in Europe and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to attempt to scale the service to other regions.
So for all their technological advances and the moves in the mobile market(s), Google are using their technical power to provide a service that will hopefully increase the chances that children who are abducted won’t become yet another statistic, or worse.
Source and Image: Google Blogs
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