Google Latitude was first released on February 5, 2009 for only a select few devices. This slowly expanded to almost every smartphone capable of having Google Maps including Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 as well as BlackBerry devices.
We’ve been waiting along with many others wondering why the iPhone hasn’t released this astonishing program that many parents would love to use on their teens. Well we don’t exactly have an answer for that but we can definitely tell you that it’s here, but we’re not too happy about it. Instead of Google integrating Latitude into the Google maps (which is amazing and simple to use) they have decided to make it as a web application. This is what Google had to say:
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.
From testing it out. It seemed pretty much the same as the Google Maps application except with some cool new features. It’s unfortunate that it can’t run in the background but we expected that. To access Google Latitude, you must have iPhone Firmware v3.0 so that it will allow safari to access your location.