We've been hearing a lot from car companies lately about adding popular social-networking apps to in-car electronics and telematics systems soon. But Google is offering the service starting today with the launch of Latitude.
The service allows anyone with a cell phone or other wireless device to keep tabs on the location of friends and family, and it's an extension on the app the company introduced two years ago that allows mobile phone users to peg their location on Google Maps.
"This adds a social flavor to Google Maps and makes it more fun," Steve Lee, a Google product manager, told the Associated Press.
Of course, a nimble company like Google can offer a service like this much quicker than an automaker, and it's designed for portable devices and not the dashboard. For now, at least.
Google Latitude could allow parents to easily and inexpensively track teen drivers or friends to spot each other on the freeway. But as with anything that has to do with sharing personal information, particularly something as revealing as a person's location, privacy issues are bound to pop up.
Google is hoping to allay those concerns by making it easy to turn off or limit access to the service. The company also says it won't retain information about users' movements and only the last known location will be stored.
Google isn't the first in the friends-finder field. Services like Loopt and the iPhone app WhosHere have garnered tech early-adopters. But Google Latitude has the potential to bring the app to the masses.
The service is available for a variety of phones, and Google says it will be available soon as an app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It also works with iGoogle so that users can track friends and family via computer, and they can also be tracked if they are using a computer connected to the Internet using Wi-Fi.
The software pinpoints the user's location, which is marked by a personal picture on Google maps, by using cell-phone tower triangulation, GPS or Wi-Fi. Latitude can be used in 26 countries in addition to the U.S.
Google says it has no immediate plans to sell advertising for the service. But given the potentially lucrative market in location-based services -- and that Google has heavily invested in the mobile market so that it can still reach users when they're away from their computers -- advertisers will certainly want to pay to know that you're passing by, say, a Starbucks or Subway.
redliner says:
01:42 PM, 02/ 4/09
Ohhh creepy. Is it just me, or does anybody else think Google is getting a little to big.
lvranger says:
04:13 PM, 02/ 4/09
I'm starting to think that google is essentially skynet.