Internet giant Google has released its “latitude” service for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which allows mobile users to view the locations of their friends on Google Maps.
The service was announced on the company’s official blog, where it said that Google Latitude will run as a web app that is available to iPhone users by logging in through the Safari web browser.
“We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. 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.”
“Google, like Apple, continues to push for improvements in web browser functionality. Now that iPhone 3.0 allows Safari to access location, building the Latitude web app was a natural next step. In the future, we will continue to work closely with Apple to deliver useful applications – some of which will be native apps on the iPhone, such as Earth and YouTube, and some of which will be web apps, like Gmail and Latitude.”
Unfortunately the service cannot run in the background of other apps, unlike the BlackBerry, but Google said the service will be updated whenever a user logs in the Google Latitude app.
Google Latitude currently only supports iPhones and iPod Touch devices running the iPhone 3.0 OS software.
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