Google’s Find My Device network quietly rolls out to some outside North America

When Google launched its Find My Device network last month, it mentioned that it was rolling out to Android devices globally, starting in the United States and Canada. It’s understandable that Google is staggering the rollout of a feature as significant as the Find My Device network since it needs some buffer time to catch any bugs that pop up before the rollout reaches a critical mass. But it’s also disappointing since it means that power users outside of the US and Canada — like many Android Authority readers — must wait even longer to get a feature they’ve already been waiting on for nearly a year. Thankfully, though, it appears that Google is finally starting to roll out the Find My Device network outside of North America, at least to some users.

If you haven’t heard, Google first announced the Find My Device network all the way back in May 2023 during that year’s I/O developer conference. Before the launch of the Find My Device network, devices needed to self-report their location to Google’s Find My Device service. That meant lost offline devices could only be located by their last known location. The Find My Device network, on the other hand, allows lost devices to be located even if they’re offline. This is possible because billions of Android devices can report each others’ locations.

Given the privacy and security fiasco that Apple’s Find My network caused when it launched to the public (people were using AirTags to track other people secretly), Google decided to delay the public launch of its Find My Device network to give Apple time to implement unknown tracker alerts in iOS. Google also built its Find My Device network with a “multi-layered” approach to privacy and security, with features like end-to-end encryption for location data and aggregated device location reporting by default. With signs that Apple’s iOS 17.5 release will finally support unknown tracker alerts, Google decided to flip the switch last month to enable its Find My Device network.

Google announced the launch of its Find My Device network in a blog post on April 8 this year. Specifically, it said it was rolling out to Android devices “around the world, starting in the US and Canada.” Although the company didn’t share exactly when the network would roll out to users outside of these two countries, a spokesperson for Pebblebee — one of several companies making Bluetooth trackers compatible with the Find My Device network — told me that its products “will be available to ship out globally as early as May 27, 2024.” This suggests that the Find My Device network will roll out globally by the end of May, just in time for these tracker products to reach consumers.

Indeed, we’re already seeing some reports of the network rolling out to users outside of North America. On Monday, Japanese Twitter user @Nrnsasa5gmmwsub shared a screenshot showing they received the Find My Device network feature. And today, UK Twitter user @willza3 shared screenshots showing they received the opt-in message to join the Find My Device network, too.

In recent days, many users in the US and Canada have reported getting emails from Google informing them that their devices will soon join the Find My Device network. However, I haven’t seen anyone outside North America say they got this email. It’s possible that Google’s rollout of the Find My Device network to these two users was a mistake, but given that it already said it planned to roll this out “around the world,” it’s more likely that it’s just rolling this out really, really slowly. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about the global rollout of the Find My Device network at next week’s Google I/O event so that users outside of North America who bought a tracker compatible with the network can actually use it.