Google Latitude Creates Controversy

Mobile Technology: Friday 6th February 2009

The announcement this week by Google of it's new location service, which allows users to publish their location to friends, has been met with concern, particularly in the UK.

From The Times Online, to London's Metro newspaper, there was concern that latitude would be the end of personal freedom. The service 'could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jelous partners and obsessive friends' warned Privacy International on Thursday.

Privacy International went on to claim that they have identified a 'major security flaw in Google's global tracking system.' These flaws relate to the location service being covertly activated on a user's handset.

Google itself made it clear that Latitude was built with personal security in mind. The system only stored the last known location and users can either set their position manually or hide it completely. Vic Gundotra, VP of Google engineering stated: 'everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but also decide the location that they see.' In other words, users can state they are in an entirely different place than their actual location.

Comments from industry figures suggest that Google has dealt well with security concerns. Furthermore a number of commentators have pointed out that that a simple 'where am I' application has limited appeal. For mobile marketers and application developers, the real potential of Latitude comes from it's integration into applications, both those from Google and third party developers.

In an article, Google's Trojan Horse in the Mobile Industry Review, the author pointed to a plethora of applications, from social networking to security that would benefit from Latitude. One significant point that has been ignored by many commentators, is that Google is providing a free location service, that mobile network operators have been charging for. Location Based Services (LBS) have regarded by many in the mobile marketing sector as having massive potential. However the greatest barrier has been the cost per location 'hit' charged by the networks. Should Google follow it's trend with other applications and publish and API, then any developer or marketer can open up a whole new range of mobile services based on location. Examples of the types of applications include traffic, transport and security ones.

There is no doubt that Google will need to continue to build trust with users to gain wide-spread adoption of the Latitude service. It will be interesting to see if mobile network operators offer free location services in order to complete with Google.

Article Links
Google Latitude
Google's Trojan Horse
Privacy International