One of the features of Android, for better or worse, is the Nearby Notifications feature. Basically the idea is that it will notify Android users of events, apps, and other happenings that might be near them, such as free WiFi, guides in museums, and so on. This might be handy for some users, but it seems that for the most part most Android users don’t seem to use it all that much, leading to Google to end support for it.
Google has announced that they will be killing off the Nearby Notifications feature due to issues of spam and irrelevant notifications that users have been facing, which they claim has led to a poor user experience. As a result, Google claims, “Ultimately, we have determined these notifications did not meet that bar. As a result, we have decided to discontinue support for Nearby Notifications. We will stop serving Nearby Notifications on December 6th, 2018.”
What this means is that come December, Android users should stop receiving such notifications, which we imagine might be a relief for some who are also finding the feature to be too spammy. Google is also calling on Android developers who use the feature to switch to a different API for proximity-based alerts.