The Google Latitude Controversy

In the UK this week many people have been up in arms about Google Latitude. If you have missed it, Google’s has launched a new location app, which allows you to publish your location based on the position of your mobile phone. The complaint has been largely one of intrusion and a compromise to personal freedom.

Personal Liberty

The issue of freedom is completely understandable. This is especially so in the current climate in the UK. These day’s Britain is the most watched country in the world – we have four times more CCTV cameras than the rest of Europe put together.

The problem for citizens in the UK is this:
We cannot move, drive our cars, stop our cars or do anything without being watched. And on the other hand we feel no safer, and it doesn’t appear to reduce crime. It seems that technology is used as a means of indirect taxation and population control. In short, people in the UK are understandably suspicious of anything that monitors and tracks our movements.

The idea that you can be tracked through your phone, naturally worries people. However, Google Latitude has not introduced a new concept. Mobile network operators have been able to trace people through their mobiles for years, by triangulating to the nearest base station. This has been offered as both (expensive) location based services, and the data has been of use to the Police during criminal investigations. Any unscrupulous government or agency can easily track your location through your mobile.
What’s more services similar to Latitude have been available for a few years: it has been quite possible to track your friend/partner/family member’s already.

Will Latitude Change Things?

The main change is that it is Google who has introduced this. That means that it is free and works (or will work) seamlessly with existing Google Apps. And being Google, most people are now aware of it’s existence.
The main question raised about tracking someone’s location, is why would you want to? The worry is that employers will track their employees movements, partners will spy on each other, parents on their children and so on. It is quite understandable to be suspicious of the motives of someone who wants to track other people’s locations.

In fact, simply as a location tool there is little point to Latitude and will not take off. The following post on Mobile Industry Review makes the point very clearly: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/02/latitude_the_trojan_horse_--_why_whos_nearby_is_not_a_business.html

The point is where Latitude will go. As the author states: ‘Be under no delusion, Latitude is Googles Trojan horse into the social networking space.’

And that is the key to this. Mobile Social Networking will allow users to ‘socialise’ with people who are in close proximity. Location based-dating could boom from this. But there are numerous other location services that could benefit from Latitude: security applications – I don’t mean spying, I mean ones where people at risk (whether professional or personal) can publish their whereabouts. Then there are applications, like travel, transport or weather.

Although many of these have already been tinkered with, they have not really taken off. There are two big factors as to why: cost and trust. Outside of phones with GPS, location based service providers must pay the networks for each hit. On the whole, users are not willing to pay for such a service, so there is no broad commercial model currently for Location Based Services. On the reasonable assumption that Google Latitude will publish an API (which they have already done with Maps and many other apps), then any developer can access location data for free and including it in their application.

Whilst there is no doubt that trust is a major issue for users of with LBS, Google are better placed than anyone to establish that trust:

‘Don’t be Evil’ is Google’s slogan. OK, there are times when they have not always been perfect (Google China being a point of this), but that overall principle seems to be intact.
Google has gone to great pains to ensure that it’s Latitude service is not evil. Only the most recent location is stored, making it difficult to track an individual’s movements. Each user has control over how their location is published with three settings:
Automatic, Manual or Hide your location … or as the Mobile Industry Review article aptly describes it, Honest, Lie or Paranoia.

Until now, location based services have been the Cinderella of mobile applications. However, the whole point of mobile is that it is, mobile. Including your location into services or apps, is the obvious next step. With Google Latitude the ‘where am I’ service is pointless and unlikely to take off. We must look to the applications that can come out of it, bringing us real benefit.