Revealing where you are through Google

Google, in their quest to offer new and useful services, just unveiled Google Latitude, a new mobile software application that will reveal an individual's location to their contacts. It's another service where Google is narrowing the gap between the digital world of the Internet and the physical world. This has been made possible in recent years with the wide use of mobile devices that are connected to high bandwidth wireless networks. I am a big fan of Google, having blogged about the California-based company in the past, but my first impression of Google Latitude was it could be used by those who are obsessive and disturbed. In a CNN.com article, Google states that users must sign up for service and can hide themselves from specific people. The service will also let a user input a manual location in case the person doesn't want to display their precise whereabouts. As with almost any new service there will be cases of people abusing the service, but I think Google has put in enough safeguards where the cases of abuse will be minimal.