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Google Latitude. Stalks cheap.

Good news for commuters. Bad news for love rats. So will you benefit from Google Latitude, the new mobile tracking tool which allows friends to keep a check on your whereabouts?

It’s true. One of the first questions we ask our friends when calling their mobiles is “where are you?” and the dreariness of this modern conversational ritual will be all too familiar to most. How many times whilst sitting on a train do you overhear the phrase “Hello…I’m on the train”. Dom Joly may have used this interchange to comic effect but it can often prove a real bore to the innocent bystander.

Well, maybe not for much longer since Google has launched Latitude, a free feature in ‘Google Maps for mobile’ which allows mobile users to share their location with friends and family.

This new service can identify anyone in your phone’s address book who is also using Google Latitude and send them a request to share their location. If they agree, you will be able to track their position via your mobile device or your desktop PC.

Suggested uses for this application have included delaying your arrival at a party until you know your friends have arrived or looking to see who is in town before planning your Friday night out.

Either way, your friends could soon know the answer to that tedious question long before they next call you on the train, which spells good news for your fellow commuters. But what about serial love rats and those that prefer to keep a low profile?

In a statement, Google explained its privacy policy for Latitude: “We thought long and hard about making sure users have control over how and when they want to be found. Once you’ve shared your location, you can hide it from individual friends or all of your friends at once, or you can turn off Google Latitude completely at any time. You can adjust your privacy settings in Latitude so that you share as much or as little about your location as you want, with whom you want.”

Google Latitude is available in 27 countries, and across a variety of devices, including:
  • Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
  • most colour BlackBerry devices
  • most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices
  • most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones)
  • Google.com users of iGoogle

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