Product Code Database
Google Latitude was a location-aware feature of Google Maps, developed by Google as a successor to its earlier SMS-based service Dodgeball. Latitude allowed a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location. Via their own Google Account, the user's cell phone location was mapped on Google Maps. The user could control the accuracy and details of what each of the other users can see — an exact location could be allowed, or it could be limited to identifying the city only. For privacy, it could also be turned off by the user, or a location could be manually entered. Users had to explicitly opt into Latitude and were only able to see the location of those friends who had decided to share their location with them.
On July 10, 2013, Google announced plans to shut down Latitude, and it was discontinued on August 9, 2013. After the feature moved to Google+ in between, Google incorporated Latitude's location sharing feature into Google Maps in March 2017.
Dodgeball offered a facility to users by way of SMS. Dodgeball was available for the cities of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis–St. Paul and Denver. Dodgeball website
In January 2009, Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering at Google, announced that the company would "discontinue Dodgeball.com in the next couple of months, after which this service will no longer be available." Dodgeball was shut down and succeeded in February 2009 by Google Latitude. Where Are You? Show ‘Em With Google Latitude m The New York Times blog, February 4, 2009.
In November 2009, Google announced a Latitude feature called "Location History" which stores and analyzes a user's location over time, for example attempting to identify a user's home and workplace. Web-based Location History is now provided by Google Maps.
In May 2010, Google announced an API for Latitude for developers to incorporate Latitude functionality into their apps. The functionality was "opt in" and had to be enabled by users due to the sensitivity of location data. Users had the ability to share their exact location, a more general city-level location, or even share a location as a destination.
In February 2012, a Leaderboard feature was added that provides point scoring and score comparison with friends.
The Sony Ericsson W995, C905, C903, C510, Elm and Satio mobile phones supported Google Latitude as part of their built-in Google Maps application. Although this was a Java ME application, it could not be downloaded for use with other mobile phones.
By early 2011, Google Latitude optionally recorded a history of places visited and counts time spent at each place. This information was then used to display statistics such as "Time At Work", "Time Spent At Home" and "Time Spent Out".
OwnTracks is a free and open-source software package for tracking people, without relying on third party cloud services. It has been described as an alternative to the now defunct Google Latitude. The project was founded in 2014.
|
|
