Google Latitude location tracking comes to India

Waiting for your girlfriend at the Colaba pub on a Saturday evening and wondering if she’s caught up in the traffic jam on way? Switch on Google Latitude on your smartphone, and let Google find her location on a map, wherever she’s in India or abroad.

Sounds a little like someone searching for the misplaced keys in a Google search box? Well, it is as near as you can get to it. Google has launched the Google Latitude location-finding service in India and 26 other countries, helping you find your friends and let them find you on a mobile phone – and it also lets you hide from them when you choose.

How does it work? Ask your girlfriend to download Google Latitude from the Google server into her mobile phone ad install it. Do the same in your cellphone too. Fix the privacy settings in such a way that you can “locate” her on Google Latitude.

So the next time you wait for her, log into Google Latutude on your mobile phone and her location flashes as a blue dot. If she’s on Marine Drive and the blue dot is stuck, she is stuck in a jam (hopefully). As her cab moves, the blue dot representing her moves too.

Currently, location tracking and navigation technology with Global Positioning System (GPS) are available on many high-end smart phones from BlackBerry, Nokia, Samsung and iPhone. This, however, does not require an expensive data plan. However, GPS handsets are costly and require additional map software to make full use of them. Whereas, Google Maps makes use of data from Google servers for maps (which requires a fast data plan in your mobile) and makes use of cell towers to determine location.

In Google Latitude, the user can select settings to the minutest point. This means you can select who all are allowed to see your location with Google Latitude and how close you want them to locate you (street-level? city-level? country-level?)

According to product manager for Google Latitude Steve Lee, “What Google Latitude does is allow you to share that location with friends and family members, and likewise be able to see friends and family members’ locations.”

In India, location mapping technology for the masses is still in its infancy. GPS devices and map software are prohibitively costly, and the few players in the field maximum use of it. Even the existing Google Map technology is unreliable as a navigation tool, since cellular towers can be misleading in pinpointing location. Besides, slow GPRS data transfer ensures that practically Google Maps and similar innovations are of little practical use.

“Fun aside, we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we’ve built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application,” Google said.

Phones which can run Google Latitude:

1. Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones.
2. Palm devices with Palm OS 5 and above.
3. All color BlackBerry devices.
4. Windows Mobile devices
5. 3G Symbian devices

Google Maps doesn’t work with BREW-enabled devices, which means Latitude will not be not compatible with many Motorola phones running BREW. Google Latitude does not run in iPhone either, though Google has promised that a Latitude for iPhone is definitely on the way.

Google may try to make use of the Latitude application later, by offering location-based advertising. Currently, Yahoo has a similar product called Fire Eagle, which offers location-tracking over mobiles. Google itself had a product earlier called Dodgeball, which was shut down in January.