Google Latitude

Share locations

Location sharing starts only when both you and a friend agree. Invite friends via email or easily add them from your Gmail contacts.

Control privacy

You can share, set, or hide your location - or turn off Google Latitude - from the privacy menu. You can also hide your location or share only a city-level location with certain friends.

Share status

Create a status message and upload your photo within Latitude. It also syncs directly with Google Talk. Check your friends' status messages to see what your friends are up to.

Contact your friends

Quickly contact your friends with an SMS, IM, or phone call. You can also get directions to lead you to your friends.

When you aren't on the go, use Latitude from your computer to see your friends on a full-screen map and get in touch with them.

You can share your location manually or use your computer's WiFi location.

More than a million wireless subscribers signed up for Google's new mobile friend finder Latitude in its first week according to Vic Gundotra, the web services giant's vice president of engineering. Speaking during a mobile Internet panel at Mobile World Congress 2009 here in Barcelona, Gundotra pointed to the location-based Latitude effort (launched earlier this month) as a prime example of the kinds of new applications enabled by the emergence of more powerful mobile web browsers and software developed to better exploit the technological capabilities of wireless devices.

"We believe that 2008 was the year mobile Internet took off," Gundotra said, citing flat data plans, full web browsers and an improved user interface as the catalysts behind the takeoff. "The iPhone was the first browser to let you surf the real web. But the browser can do more than just browse content--it's a platform for innovations."

According to Gundotra, the modern, cutting-edge mobile browser must comprise three key elements: The HTML5 core language specification, application caching and geolocation tools. He illustrated his argument by showing for the first time in public a new Gmail concept for smartphones that capitalizes on app caching to enable users to browse and search through messages even when the network connection is disabled. Gundotra also demonstrated a mobile search solution integrated with location, voice recognition and the device accelerometer to query "weather," automatically receiving a local forecast for the Barcelona area as determined via GPS.

During a panel discussion following the Gundotra keynote, moderator Rajeev Chand, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Rutberg & Co., said he was surprised by the relatively low number of devices based on Google's Android mobile operating system that were introduced at Mobile World Congress, and asked whether creating an environment around the OS has proven more difficult than Google anticipated. "It takes time," Gundotra responded. "We're very patient."

A privacy group is calling Google Inc.'s new mapping application an "unnecessary danger" to users' security and privacy.

The criticism comes just a day after Google Inc. unveiled Google Latitude, an upgrade to Google Maps that allows people to track the exact location of friends or family through their mobile devices. Google Latitude not only shows the location of friends, but it can also be used to contact them via SMS, Google Talk or Gmail.

Today, Privacy International is raising a red flag about the technology.

"Many people will see Latitude as a cool product, but the reality is that Google has yet again failed to deliver strong privacy and security," said Simon Davies, director of London-based Privacy International, in a statement. "The company has a long way to go before it can capture the trust of phone users. As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends. The dangers to a user's privacy and security are as limitless as the imagination of those who would abuse this technology."

Google, responding to Computerworld questions in an e-mail, said their engineers and designers took privacy and security concerns into account when they created Google Latitude.

"Concerns have been raised about the possibility of the product being installed onto someone's mobile phone covertly," said a Google spokeswoman. "While many of the scenarios that have been described are unlikely, we take this issue seriously and always listen to feedback from our users. We already have a safety feature working on certain mobile devices that actively alerts users that Latitude is running, and we are in the process of extending this notification to other mobile platforms supporting Google Latitude, which will be ready within a week."

Privacy International, in an online posting, expressed concern that Google Latitude lacks sufficient safeguards to keep someone from surreptitiously opting into the tracking feature on someone else's device. The problem arises when someone can gain physical access to another person's cell phone.

The privacy group added that the only way to reduce this threat is to have a regular message pop up on the phone, reminding the user that Latitude is in use.

Google's spokeswoman noted that the message that pops on BlackBerry devices is engaged when Latitude has been installed but not been used for a while.

That doesn't appear to be an adequate safeguard for the privacy group, which said in a written statement, "If the tracked party is unaware that her phone has been enabled, the Latitude settings could indefinitely be set to continuous tracking, thus ensuring that the alert message is never sent from Google."

In an interview on Tuesday, Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said the Google tool is interesting even if there are obvious potential privacy issues when people know your every move.

Olds added that people need to think through who can access such personal information. "Users need to understand how to do it and why they probably don't want to constantly broadcast their locations to the world at large," he said.

How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to? It's a pretty central question to our daily social lives, and it's precisely the question you can now answer using Google Latitude.

Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It's also an iGoogle gadget on your computer. Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you. So 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.

And with Latitude, not only can you see your friends' locations on a map, but you can also be in touch directly via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating your status message; you can even upload a new profile photo on the fly. It's a fun way to feel close to the people you care about.

Fun aside, we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application. Everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see. For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere - perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls . Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change 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. Everything is under your control and, of course, you can sign out of Latitude at any time.

Finally, since we'd like you to be able to use Latitude with any of your friends, we've been working hard to make it available to as many people as possible. Today, Latitude is available in 27 countries, and we hope to add more soon.

Ready to share your location? If you have a mobile smartphone, visit google.com/latitude on your phone's web browser to download the latest version of Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. Latitude is available on Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile, and will be available on Android in the next few days. We expect it will be coming to the iPhone, through Google Mobile App, very soon.