Google has released a Google Latitude web app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, running Safari. To use it, users can go to google.com/latitude. A bookmark can be created so that there is a home screen link of course.
“Our Latitude web app provides all the core functionality you might expect: you can see the location of your friends on a map and modify your privacy settings so that you control how your location is shared and with whom,” says Mat Balez, Product Manager on the Google Mobile Team. “In fact, if my friends and colleagues back in London haven’t yet noticed my absence, they’ll see in Latitude that I’m currently vacationing on the beach in Australia.”
“We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users,” says Balez. “After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.”
Users should note that Google cannot provide continuous background location updates on the iPhone like it can on other platforms. The company attributes this to a lack of a mechanism for apps to run in the background on the iPhone.
Google says that the company will be working closely with Apple in the future on apps on the iPhone like Google Earth, YouTube, Gmail, and Latitude. Currently, the Google Latitude app supports iPhone/iPod Touch OS 3.0 or above, and is available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with more countries in the future.
