Santa's village from NORAD's Microsoft-backed Santa tracker
Santa’s village from NORAD’s Microsoft-backed Santa tracker

It’s December, and that means it’s officially time for tech companies to start kicking off their holiday tomfoolery. Google and Microsoft have once again gone to the mat in a fight for the ages: the battle to track Santa.

Each company is participating in its own way: Microsoft Azure is powering NORAD’s Santa Tracker, while Google (which ran NORAD’s service until 2011) is serving up its own site to track Father Christmas around the world. Each service will plot the big red guy’s journey on a map on Christmas Eve, but until then, the sites serve as portals for games and activities related to Christmas.

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Both trackers have been updated with new features this year as well. NORAD’s site has been re-designed to run on mobile web browsers, so that people can point their mobile device of choice at the tracker and get live updates. Google has released a new Android app that provides a native experience on devices running the company’s mobile operating system.

This whole Santa-tracking tradition got started in 1955, when the Continental Air Defense Command (NORAD’s predecessor, CONAD) received calls on Christmas after a misprinted Sears and Roebuck ad accidentally listed a CONAD hotline in place of a number kids could call to speak with Santa. Ever since then, the organization has offered Santa-tracking services.

One word of warning to parents: the two sites don’t coordinate Santa’s location, so you may have some explaining to do if your child decides to flip back and forth between each tracker.

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