location tracking

[Baggypants]

IF .... a fifty dollar hand held gps receiver can pin point its own location ?
                  Then what is all this Microsoft style bloatware still doing in an "open source" program.?

It's because GPS is terribly, terribly slow to get an initial location fix, and doesn't work well in built up areas with tall buildings, and flat out doesn't work at all indoors. Wifi and cell tower location is inaccurate compared to GPS but does have the advantage of someone in an office sat at a desk being able to quickly find out where the nearest coffee shop that might have oat milk is located.

Fortunately we're not at the behest of Mozilla Location Services. We can all run our own Ichnaea server if we wish. https://ichnaea.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ and download the location data to populate it with. https://ichnaea.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

We could also run this service on our pinephones if we so desired.