Petrol prices pop onto iGoogle

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 24 September 2008 08:21

Business IT - Networking

With petrol prices staying relatively high thanks to exchange rate fluctuations wiping out the fall in oil prices, the debut of Google's Petrol Price Tracker is well timed.

The Petrol Price Tracker is a gadget for iGoogle pages. It lets the user select fuel type (eg, unleaded), brand and either an address or postcode, and returns a sorted list of prices at nearby service stations.

Clicking a link brings up a Google Maps view of the data, with petrol stations shown as pins. And since it is a Google Map, directions are available at the click of a mouse.

Green pins denote the cheapest fuel in the area, and red is used for the rest - even if they are only a fraction of a cent above the minimum price for the neighbourhood. So read the numbers carefully: you wouldn't want to drive out of your way for an insignificant saving.

The price data is collected by MotorMouth. It covers fuel outlets in Brisbane, the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth. Prices are collected in the morning and afternoon from Monday to Friday, and once a day on Sundays.

In most cases, the data is collected by direct observation of price boards outside service stations. Perth data is the exception, as it comes from the Western Australian government as a consequence of the fuel price legislation in that state which disallows intra-day price variations.

While MotorMouth claims to cover over 50 percent of servos, focussing on those on major routes, we noted some servos operated by big name chains and located on extremely busy roads were missing. Furthermore, the area covered by a search could be quite extensive and skewed in a particular direction which does not necessarily align with common journeys.

We also noticed slightly different results for the same criteria entered into the form on the map view compared with using the gadget.

"Of course, the best way to reduce your fuel bill would be to walk, cycle or catch public transport to wherever you're going," said Julian Sonego, consumer marketing manager at Google.

Although Google Desktop for Mac allows the use of iGoogle gadgets in Mac OS X's Dashboard, the Petrol Price Tracker does not yet appear in the list of gadgets that can be installed via the Google Gadget application.