FollowFew weeks ago, Google Reader was axed and in the coming month, Google is to going to kill its location sharing service, Google Latitude. The service will put to rest on August 9th. Google Latitude allows users to share their location and it also allows them to track their friends’ movements online.
The news about discontinuation of the Google Latitude comes on the very same day when Google released an updated version Google Maps for Android. If you visit the Google Support site, you will see that Google has officially announcement the retirement of Google Latitude. The post also says that the service won’t be accessible from apps like Google Maps, Latitude apps, Latitude API and iGoogle gadget.
Google is concentrating heavily on improving Google Maps and to make it easy to use across both Android and iOS powered devices. From August 9, users will not be able to share their location with their friends and even the friends list on Google Latitude will become inaccessible. Email reminders and check-ins will also be disabled.
The decision on the retirement of Google Latitude may not surprise many users because Google has been evidently concentrating on Google Plus and has given less importance to Google Latitude. Location sharing feature is available with the Android app for Google Plus and soon it will be made available for iOS.
The newer version of Google Maps for both Android and iOS now offers enhanced navigation details like traffic information, feature that allows you to view places that might interest you and many more. By retiring Google Latitude, the company wants you to use Google Plus for location sharing. It is a good option; however, all your friends should be using Google Plus to share location information with each other.
Google Latitude was launched in 2009 and it allowed friends to see each other’s location on a map. The locations were constantly updated which allowed users to get real-time location information of their friends. It would also tell which places your friends visited. However, many weren’t that interested in using the soon to be axed location based service from Google. The main reason behind its low popularity was that people were not interested in sharing their real-time location information.
