Google Latitude: Ready to Tell Your Friends (and Google) Where You Are?
Where you are is as important as what you're looking for. That's why more and more services are looking to location as a filter for providing relevant information when and where we need it. So it only makes sense that Google - a company known for its ability to deliver relevant information - get into the location-aware app game. Today, they jumped in with both feet by releasing Google Latitude, a way to keep track of your friends' current whereabouts - and let Google have a view into your nomadic or sedentary habits.
Google Latitude allows you to share location-based information with friends. And it's incredibly easy to get started. Simply install the app on your smartphone (no iPhone yet) or iGoogle. You have the option of sharing your location by dynamically updating the service using your phone or by manually updating your location on the Web.
Knowing where people are is great. Being able to get ahold of them is even better. That's why Latitude also lets you interact with them by providing access to SMS and IM or allowing you to call them.
It's All About the Data
While many of us have grown used to providing details on our travels by updating location-aware apps like Brightkite or checking in with sites like Dopplr, those journeys have always been loosely affiliated with the rest of our habits - through a lifestream, at best. Today, with Google gathering this information, it changes the picture entirely.
For millions of users, Google already knows how they search, what they click, what they buy, who they know, how they communicate, and where they go on the Web. Location enables them to add another critical data point - where they are when they're performing any of those actions. So if you think Google has too much information about you already, you've got another think coming.
Long story short, Latitude adds a whole new level of complexity to Google's understanding of you and your habits. And while we'll no doubt derive some very interesting benefits from sharing that information, we should hold no illusions about the value of that data to Google and its efforts to run a profitable business.
But, in Google's defense, they've also worked to ensure you have a way to opt out of the service and maintain complete control over your privacy. Katherine Boehret of The Wall Street Journal, who has had the opportunity to test drive Latitude for the past week, also gives a nod to those opt-out features:
"Usability issues aside, location-based services like Latitude can be just plain creepy, especially when a Big Brother like Google is tracking your whereabouts. So Google incorporated easy-to-change privacy settings so that locations can be automatically detected, manually entered or completely hidden from other people. Or people can sign out of Latitude altogether."
Do No Evil, Please
It was only a matter of time before Google entered this market, and no doubt millions of people will soon be flooding the service with their up-to-the-minute location details. With the combination of Google Maps, Google Latitude, Google Friend Connect, and Android, it's not very difficult to begin daydreaming about the potential for this service.
But it's also a leap of faith as a user, entrusting Google with yet another piece of data that helps them figure out the puzzle of understanding you - and how and where you're likely to perform actions that put money in Google's pocket.
It will be interesting to see where Google goes with this one - and interesting to see where you're going, now that we can look over your shoulder.
Update: See our follow-up analysis Did Google Just Kill All the Other Mobile Social Networks?
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Was checking it out. It's just OK, slightly lame, clunky to use. Grade: B-
What really sucks is the lack of fine grained privacy controls, like Fire Eagle has ( Fire Eagle's grade: A+ ).
What do you think this means for mobile social networks ? Will they survive? Will Google crush them or will they still have a place ?
The more Geo data the better. I'm busy tagging photo's, transactions and all kinds of data with location meta. Anything that automates this is a win.
Google Maps works well on S60. On my French cellular network it uses cellID - and it works out of the box. GPS being useless indoors, and people like me being indoors most of the time, this is great news !
I would love Google to add Google Latitude geographic data to Google Talk's presence (through XEP-0080: User Location).
There is a problem with not having intimacy levels. A service currently exist a brand new start-up called mygeni.org. Currently in Alpha testing that goes way beyond this application. Check it out.
Ant
I admit I only searched briefly, but does this service not have a corresponding API for applications like FireEagle? Or did I just miss it?
Will it really tell a very accurate information?
Tell me why can't you host your own location service at home computer and then share it through oauth to contacts. Then you are very aware if someone (anyone) else is accessing your data.
I don't see any positive in having massive location database that can easily be used to determine where you were and with who.
Now my stalker knows exactly where to find me!
I'm curious to know why this doesnt seem to work for desktop PCs. They could attempt to access the IP location info - and simply use that general location.
As for privacy... what privacy? Where?
I just installed the program in my blackberry. It doesn't tell precisely where I am; I'm not even in the map range google is telling me I am now. I'm close, in the neighborhood they're indicating in the map, but not in the range.
Those who said I can check if my friends are coming to a specific restaurant are lying. I can tell they're coming to town, or are in town, but not on a specific street, building or place.
Latitude on Samsung Omnia (i900) sucks. It doesn't work with the samsung keyboard. It simply can't read the input. Standard WinMo keyboard does work :~
I think George Orwell would change his book 1984 to "Google" or every that "big brother" was mentioned in the book, he would say "Google was watching, tracking our moves, tracking our buying habits, tracking, tracking.. selling our record of habits to a third party. Now everyone will be receiving emails from the stores close by on the routes posted by Latitude."
and everyone laughs when they watch a movie and see that the government can focus a satellite on a certain location to monitor peoples moves...
and people laugh when someone says that the Rockefeller group and the rest of the CFR group are out to rob from the poor and make the rich, richer.
Enjoy getting fatter everyone, enjoy living miserably poor, enjoy what life the aristocracy has put in place for you.
Google is evil... PERIOD.
Ok, owners of bus companies, train companies, taxis, delivery and haulage companies and company cars here is your challenge: be the first to roll this out across your fleet.
Hopefully millions of customers can see efficiency improvements through less wasted time. Time wasted waiting for buses uncertain if it is coming and when. Time wasted waiting for deliveries. Time wasted sitting in traffic. Time wasted by people not wanting to return to the office too soon from a call-out. Time wasted sending a taxi to a job when one is free, near and returning to base.
If only public networks used this technology a smart programmer could estimate in real time optimal journey times and routes.
Oh the opportunities!
Go get 'em tigers!
Loopt anyone?
http://www.loopt.com/