Google and Apple announced a joint effort on Friday to help governments and health agencies track the spread of the coronavirus through Bluetooth technology.

The two tech giants are launching a solution that would enable iOS and Android devices to communicate with one another using apps from public health authorities. The companies will do this by releasing a set of application programming interfaces, or APIs, that would enable interoperability between Android and iOS.

In the coming months, Apple and Google will also be building a broader, more robust platform for tracking the spread through Bluetooth technology that users will be able to opt into.

Both companies said the tools would be built with user privacy in mind.

The new Bluetooth protocol, which the companies are calling Contact Tracing, could alert participants via their smartphone if they have possibly been in contact with an infected individual, according to Apple's whitepaper. 

Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned that this would be executed in a way that honors "transparency" and "consent" in a tweet on Friday. 

The whitepaper also notes that the user's location is not required for the technology to work. The documents also say that proximity identifiers will be changed every 15 minutes, meaning that it would be unlikely that a user's location would be tracked via Bluetooth over extended periods of time.  It also reiterates that users must opt into the contact tracing protocol. 

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