Hacked Info

The newest application launch from the Google stable is appropriately named the “Google Latitude”, an add-on feature on Google Maps, which lets friends, colleagues or family members to announce and keep track of each others’ locations on real time basis.  The location coordinates are extracted from mobile phone towers to which the mobile phone of each member is connected.

Recognizing the privacy concerns of mobile phone users, Latitude allows you to control your privacy as you wish.  In the privacy menu of Latitude, you can choose to detect and share your location automatically or manually set your location (you can even choose to enter a false location!), hide your location to all or a chosen few of your group, or completely turn off Latitude.  Another privacy control option allows you to decide how much details you want to share.  One can choose between no location data, city-level info or even a ‘best available’ data mode.

Google Latitude is not an auto detection add-on that lets anybody and everybody to track each other.  To let two individuals to track each other, both have to give consent to each other and also that both will have to be subscribers of the same mobile network. (This restriction may soon disappear, depending on how enthusiastically customers will receive this location based service.)  Invitations can be sent out through email or can be added through Gmail contacts.  Since privacy settings for each contact is individually set, one can always reconfigure the settings for each contact at will.

Google Latitude can be installed on mobile devices where Google Maps for mobile v3.0 and above is supported.  Some of the currently available devices are – Android-powered devices, BlackBerry devices, Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, Nokia smartphones, Symbian S60 devices, etc. Latitude is not presently available on iPhones but apparently Google is working on developing a version of Latitude for iPhones too. Google Latitude is now offered in 27 countries.

On the Latitude activated devices, the location detection and updating is done automatically in the background, letting your friends, who have permission to track your location , to update your progress constantly.  However, continuous location sharing involve high amount of data traffic, and therefore it is advisable to subscribe for unlimited data plan before Latitude is activated. Another concern is the expected high drain on your mobile battery, though no data on battery drain is as yet available.

BrightKite and Loopt are two similar services already in existence, and Google’s Latitude seems to be an attempt to beat the competition.  Both the BrightKite and Loopt have limited audiences currently and only time will tell whether Latitude can attract a wider customer base and become successful.

Google with its worldwide presence and muscle may be able to market Latitude much better.  However, the privacy concerns may be a daunting impediment to overcome for the desired penetration.  If you are able to willingly announce and share your location, it may also be possible for the crooks to ‘steal’ the information for their wicked activities.  So, the conservatives may decide to wait and watch, but the adventurous guys are welcome to jump in.