Looking for an easy way to stalk your friends? Google has the answer with its new Latitude service for mobile devices. Google Latitude broadcasts your location from your mobile phone, letting your friends know where you are and allowing you to keep tabs on them.
Latitude shares your current location with your friends by using Google Maps’ My Location feature. Like the iPhone’s built-in geo tools, My Location uses the signals from nearby cellphone towers to plot your whereabouts (but, read on, this isn’t iPhone ready yet).
Interestingly, Google is launching its own homegrown location-broadcasting service just weeks after killing off Dodgeball, a very similar location service Google let languish in private beta mode until it shut it down completely.
To give Latitude a try, just download the latest version of Google Maps for mobile with Latitude (available for Android, Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile). There’s also an iGoogle gadget for use on your laptop or PC.
One place you won’t find the Latitude application is on the iPhone. Because Latitude is an always-on service, operating silently in the background, it runs afoul of Apple’s iPhone SDK. Google is reportedly working on a version of Latitude for the company’s Google Mobile App for the iPhone, but for now anyway, iPhone users are out of luck.
As with any sane location-aware service, Latitude is entirely opt-in and offers privacy controls similar to those found in other services like BrightKite or Loopt. Once Latitude is enabled, you can choose who gets to see your location on a person-by-person basis. When a contact requests your location data you can reciprocate or deny each individual request.
Latitude also offers control over how much location detail is shared. Once again the controls are separate for each friend you’re sharing with, and allow you to choose between no location data, city-level info or the “best available” data. If you want to temporarily drop off the grid, Latitude allows you to manually set your location or hide it entirely.
Given that privacy is huge concern with location-aware services, Google has posted a video showing the various ways to control your privacy and suggesting some tips on how to use Latitude:
So what’s the difference between Latitude and a service like BrightKite? The answer is not much. Latitude in its current form looks like Google’s “me too!” response to BrightKite or Loopt. Given that both BrightKite and Loopt are still primarily niche services with limited audiences, it’s hard to imagine Latitude doing much better.
While the Google name may help Latitude’s mainstream exposure, the idea of broadcasting your location still gives many people the creeps and despite Latitude’s privacy controls, for many, the creepiness an stalker-friendly aspects remain.
Latitude does offer some tie-ins with other Google services, which might convince some of you sitting on the fence that it’s worth a try. For instance, not only can you see your friend’s locations in Latitude you can also get in touch via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating your status message. However, BrightKite offers more or less the same contact features using its own tools, like e-mail or SMS updates from friends.
On the downside, the same background-process that prevents an iPhone version of Latitude also raises some concerns about the impact on your phone’s battery life. Google hasn’t released any data and because the application is brand new, there’s little anecdotal evidence to go by, but suffice to say that Latitude will, in all likelihood, put at least some additional drain on your already limited battery life.
But if you’re a big fan of Google services and have been itching for the big G’s answer to Brightkite and Loopt, Latitude fits the bill. For more information, check out Google’s overview video or grab a copy for your mobile phone by downloading the latest version of Google Google Maps for mobile.
