Mountain View, California — Have you ever wondered in a chaotic situations to find out where your friends or your spouse or your child is? Or just wish to satisfy obviate your worries about your daughter safely reached the library or not? These are the question Google Inc. hopes to answer for you with an upgraded software it has released on Wednesday called “Google Latitude” that allows users of mobile phones and other wireless devices to effectively track the whereabouts of their family and friends.
The company said an upgrade to Google Maps would enable people to find out the exact location of friends or family through their mobile devices. Google Latitude not only displays the location of friends, but it can also be utilized to communicate with them via SMS, Google Talk or Gmail, said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering with Google’s mobile team, in a blog post.
The feature, called “Latitude,” expands over a tool unveiled a year ago to enable mobile phone users to view their own location on a Google map with the press of a button.
“This adds a social flavor to Google maps and makes it more fun,” said Steve Lee, a Google product manager.
“Now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend or take comfort in knowing that a loved one’s flight landed safely, despite bad weather,” wrote Gundotra. “It is a fun way to feel close to the people you care about.”
Scott Ellison, vice president of mobile and wireless at IDC, commented on the newly released upgrade that such GPS technology has already been obtainable from other vendors for some time, Google’s entry into the business prompts a lot of buzz.
Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, mentioned that Google’s new service is interesting, although there are apparent potential privacy issues when people know your every move.
“Latitude brings out a powerful tool in users’ hands. Parents can easily track their children. People can follow their friends’ travels,” said Olds. “Businesses can watch employee movements across the world or inside a particular facility. It will allow them to quickly dispatch, for example, the closest service person to a customer location. With Latitude, it can be done without taking the time to call service people to find out if the workers actually are where they think they are. The company will automatically know.”
But he remarked that people need to think through who can access such personal information. “Users need to understand how to do it and why they probably do not want to constantly broadcast their locations to the world at large,” he added.
Google Latitude, for now is only available for use on Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile with plans for availability on Android and iPhone are on the board. It enables a person to see the approximate location of others who have have decided to share their location information.
As for those concerned about privacy, ample number of options have been added. Each user can control who sees their location as well as being able to set where they’re at. A user could, for example, set their location to be showing one place while actually being at another.
Users in 27 countries would be able to beam their location to others constantly, using Google Latitude. Controls allow users to select who receives the information or to go offline at any time, Google said on its website.
“You not only control precisely who gets to see your location, but you can also manipulate the location that they see.”
“Fun aside, we understand the sensitivity of location data, so we have developed a fine-grained privacy controls right into the application,” said Gundotra. “Since you may not want to pass-on the same information with everyone, Latitude allows you to modify the settings on a friend-by-friend basis. So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide.”