Google today announced the Latitude feature, an addition to its Google Mobile application, which will allow you to track the location of your friends. Previously you were able to track yourself, via the My Location feature added in late 2007.
There's also an iGoogle gadget for those with an unsupported device (like currently, the iPhone).
You sign in with your Google account and invite friends to Latitude from your contacts or through email. Latitude integrates Google Talk, and you can also call, SMS, IM, or email each other from within the app.
It would be nice, though, if the app integrated your status with Facebook, Twitter, and the like, which it doesn't. After all, Google wants to be all things for all people, right?
To get the new app with the Latitude feature:
- On your mobile phone: visit google.com/latitude from your phone's mobile browser to download Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. As I said, no iPhone support yet (it's probably stuck in the draconian App Store approval process) but they currently support Android, Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile.
- On your PC: go to http://google.com/latitude from your browser and add the Latitude gadget to your iGoogle homepage. If you've installed Google Gears or if you're using Google Chrome, you can choose to automatically share your location from your laptop or desktop computer.
Google isn't first to the market with location-based social services. In fact, it's rather late, with services like Loopt and Where already in the market, but Google is the 800-pound gorilla of the Internet, and anything they release, including Latitude, is bound to attract both attention and adoption.
Watch a Google demo video below. And where's that iPhone version, again!?
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