San Francisco — Search engine behemoth Google Inc. earlier this year introduced Latitude as a location-based service (LBS) competing with the likes of Brightkite and Loopt. But since yesterday, Google has finally added Latitude to Apple’s iPhone, but it is now available on the web instead of app store.
Once charged up, Latitude is displayed as a tab on m.google.com, Google’s mobile face. The main interface presents a list of contacts. Clicking on your own icon lets you set your status and edit your privacy settings.
Google said it chose this route because Apple was concerned users would confuse Latitude with Maps. However, Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra provocatively declared last week at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference that it viewed browser-based apps as the future, instead of closed environments like the app store.
Google Mobile Team product manager Mat Balez blogged the news, saying that “I’m a big fan of the iPhone. I’m also a big fan of the web. So, naturally, I’m excited that today we are finally releasing Google Latitude for iPhone and iPod touch as a web application running in Safari.”
Earlier this morning, a group of CNET people have started checking out with Google’s Web-based Latitude for iPhone ahead of the official rollout announcement.
Similar to other LBS’s, Latitude lets you to add friends, see their location on a map, and send messages to schedule lunch or a meeting. You get absolute control over privacy settings such as who are allowed to see your location and how exactly it is plotted on their map. Latitude for iPhone also lets you view traffic, search for businesses, and, of course, effortlessly update your own location.
Simply visit Google.com/latitude to get started.
Clicking a contact’s icon displays the option to send an e-mail, get directions to the contact’s location, and modify the precision of location information you wish to share with the person. The options are “best available location,” “only city-level location,” and “hide from this friend.”
The three privacy choices allows you to set the application to detect your location automatically, to require you to set it manually, and to hide your location altogether. There is also as standard search and directions functionality, and like the Google Maps for mobile and desktop client apps, when you press the “blue dot” you are taken to your approximate current location on the map with My Location. In addition to tracking friends, the menu supplies options to search or clear the map, view traffic, get directions, and see a satellite view.
Latitude, which was released in February, is a social layer over maps that displays your location in real-time. It can also show your friends’ locations, so you can log-in, see if any friends happen to be nearby and spontaneously meet up.
However, the iPhone version of Latitude comes without teeth, as it is entirely browser-based, rather than a native app. This means this version of Latitude would not update your location constantly the way it does for Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile users.
Moreover, the best part is that the Web app easily incorporates with the Gmail contacts list, letting you select contacts you would like to invite from the list; those who already are Google Latitude users get a special icon to let you know they are signed up already. You also can invite people by their e-mail addresses without using Gmail contacts.
Google’s Latitude Web app runs on iPhone operating system 3.0. It is currently available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and in the UK, and US.