Name-based Robots.txt for Wifi Access Points?

Google just announced via a blog post – Greater choice for wireless access point owners – that owners of wifi acccess points who did not want Google to add the address and location of the access point to the Google Location Server that they need to rename the access point by adding _nomap to the end of the access point name or SSID (e.g. My Network_nomap) [UPDATE: note that this means it’s an opt-out model rather than a _mapme opt-in strategy (h/t @patparslow for that…)]

This is a bit like the declarative approach webpublishers take to identify pages they don’t want search robots indexing, by including the names/paths of “please don’t” content in a robots.txt file. The Google assumption seems to be that if anything is visible in pretty much any way, they can index it unless you explicitly tell them not to.

All well and good, but what about the access points that Google has already added to the index, even if their publishers rather they didn’t? Will these be automagically removed next time a lookup is made?

Maybe the removal protocol will work like this: Android phone or browser with location service enabled* detects local access point name, tells Google Location Service, Google notes that the name is now ‘_nomap’, deletes it from the index, returns ‘not found’?

*You do know your browser often knows where you are from local wifi points, don’t you, even if your laptop doesn’t have GPS or a 3G card? It tends to go by the name location aware browsing and involves your browser sending identifiers such as your IP address, the names of local wifi access points, and a browser ID to a Google service that has a big database of identifiers and geo-location data for where it thinks each identifier is located. (Hmmm..interesting… I hadn’t realised that Firefox uses the Google Location Service till just now..?)

I don’t think you even need to be logged on to a network for it’s name to be phoned back to the location service? As the Mozilla FAQ puts it: “By default, Firefox uses Google Location Services to determine your location by sending … information about the nearby wireless access points…” (note nearby wireless access points).

PS by the by, here’s the strategy used by Android phones for detecting location.

Is there a similar diagram for how browsers approach location detection anywhere?