By 
It’s been a real sorrowful time for those who enjoy several of Google’s services. Google Reader died, offline maps was taken out of the new Google Maps update, and now another nice service is going six feet under soon. Google has announced that Google Latitude will cease to exist beginning August 9th. So what does this mean for those who use it?
- You’ll no longer be able to share your location using Latitude after August 9th.
- Latitude isn’t included as a feature in the latest version of Google Maps for mobile on Android. (Our iOS brethren will get the same treatment.)
- Your list of friends on Latitude will be deleted. You won’t be able to see or manage friends. Friends will no longer see your location in Google Maps for mobile on Android, Latitude for iPhone, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude.
It’s gone. Poof. Just like that. We imagine this has something to do with Google wanting you to use the location sharing feature in Google+ more than anything. It’s a viable alternative, but it would rely on you and your friends both using Google+, and we imagine that’s not something a lot of people are happy about.
It really is a shame that all these great Google services are taking a backseat to Google+, and although Google will ever admit that is their goal we are going to continue to assume that’s what it is until we are afforded a proper explanation. Set your calendars, and reset your counters to see how long it will take for your next favorite service to eventually bite the dust.
[via Google]
It was a battery hogging POS anyway.
Latitude was not the hog it is the location services so Google can serve you ads based on your local. This will still be running in the background and sucking down your battery. All they are doing is removing the database list for Maps so you will need to use Google+ instead which does not perform the same at all and has already been availible for a while.
No it wasn’t.
“We decided to get rid of Gmail. Google+ has its own messaging system though, dont worry!”
hahaah for the win!
lol
Don’t jinx it! D:
Sad to see latitude die. It was such a useful tool for my wife and I … we didn’t have to send texts to each other saying “Where are you?” and “When are you going to be home?” I’d just pop up latitude and see “oh she’s on her way home now…”
G+ check ins don’t provide this functionality. Maybe some enterprising app developer can incorporate latitude’s features in a slick interface.
same here
Try Bubbler GPS with the Spotwalla service.
How long have you been married? There’s no way in hell I’m letting my wife monitor my location. Not because I’m a cheating bastard, but because I do have things to do she’s better not knowing about.
Sounds like you need a new career. Regardless, Latitude tracking is very easy to disable momentarily, and you can even give it arbitrary locations like Antarctica :)
Are you in the Mafia?
Yup. Enlightened ;)
Nah – the Resistance are the Mafia! :)
The Enlightened will be stopped.
Yea, we know what things. Things you are hiding from your wife. You should just get a divorce.
Are you 12? Really?
Why did you even get married if you are hiding things from your wife? It doesn’t make any sense unless you didn’t really want to get married and you did it anyway… Which makes you a Pu$$y. It would explain everything. Men don’t hide things from their wives, but little boys do.
You really are 12. Your naive vision of the world gives it out.
Last comment. I feel sorry for your wife and kids if you have any. It is a 2 way street for your wife too. If you have any kids I would get a DNA test. LOL
the personal attacks are not only inappropriate for this forum but are uncalled for given the nature of his remarks; ie it sounds like they are playing on competing teams in a popular AR game.
Finally, someone gets it! The only bit of info missing is that she doesn’t play, but gets really pissed off when hears that I “play some marker game in my 40s”. They always think that men are not busy enough.
actually, i think that eric is the only one who didn’t get it. and i won’t hold it against you that you’re on the wrong side. :P
No. You don’t have to share everything. Why does your wife have to know EVERYTHING? I’m not keeping secrets. It feels like there is no trust and she has to “make sure” that I’m where I say I am.
If she wanted to know at that moment, I’d tell her and she’d believe me. She won’t go, “okay, now let me check to see if he’s telling the truth”.
I just don’t see the trust in that relationship doing things like that. People do things differently, so please don’t let me stop you. If you’re happy with it, then you know you found a good partner. LoL!!
Yeah, I just can’t care if my girlfriend knows where I am.
35 years married… and I think differently…
The more you share, the better it gets…
It can be scary in the beginning and sometimes hurtful, but open and honesty is the only way to go. (I meant between you and your wife only!)
I completely agree. I said the exact same thing on the other article.
https://phandroid.com/2013/07/09/new-google-maps-update-now-live-in-the-google-play-store-sort-of/#comment-957347331
The ironic thing is that whenever I manually checked in via the Latitude (sub-)app, it would post on Google+ anyways!! (and only visible to my “Latitude friends/circle”).
If you need real-time location tracking, try a service called Glympse. You can use it as an app on your phone/tablet, or view it via a browser on your computer.
With Glymse, you can only share your location for a maximum of 4 hours, you have to share it individually (eg. send share to Jim, Bob and Joe) and it’s a huge battery drainer. Google Latitude was Perfect!
how about life360?
Same here…my wife and I use this a lot…just cases of…”oh, has she left work yet?”…or “is he still drinking in the parking lot after hockey???”
Read that as “or ‘is she still drinking in the parking lot after hockey???'” and thought you had a real winner for a wife. Ah, well.
G+ does have a latitude feature. You just need to be both using G+ and share your location.
Nick, is the G+ “latitude feature” integrated with Google maps (for Android) in the same simple and instant manner as Latitude is? I.e. with the little arrow bubbles popping up in maps?
as far as I can tell, yes. It has your avatar and your location on the map. the only issue is that it’s in g+, not a layer on maps.
Thanks, I’ll have to try that then. I’m on G+ anyway, so hope don’t loose much functionality. Sounds like more clickety-click job though. Or tappety-tap on the Galaxy.
Exactly how I feel.
Never once used this service so I’m not surprised.
They should kill Google+ and remake Google Voice to be like iMessage next.
Who actually used Latitude?!
My friends and I used it all the time.
We used it for a bachelor party in Vegas. Really easy to keep track of everyone.
I’d trade a hundred Latitudes for one Reader.
I use Latitude to find lost phones or get a fix on the kiddo’s when they decide not to answer txt or calls. I can do without it as there are other services but Google+ is not the answer and does not give me the same data therefor it is not a viable alternative.
Latitude can be buggy, and laggy, especially when tracking people. I was trying to find my wife on the map when she was sitting right next to me, it said she was 10 miles away. It updated very slowly as well. But ill still miss it .
It atleast tell you when it was last updated (to give you an idea of accuracy), and you could also “ping” people for an update.
Here’s hoping they spare Voice, I use it all day every day.
Here is a good story for Phandroid.com LMAO http://news-hound.net/samsung-pays-apple-1-billion-sending-30-trucks-full-of-5-cent-coins/
That story is actually quite old, and was debunked long ago. Still funny, though. XD
Well damn that would have been funny.
I for one will miss it.
wait, people used latitude?
Damn…that sucks. My family uses this service often. When we travel, we can always check to see how far along someone is or if they made it to their destination (without requiring a text to ask). It was always so easy to pull up Google Maps and see where everyone was.
If I was visiting an adult book store or something, I would just turn it off for a minute :)
Wow latitude really is one of the best Google features..my whole family and friends are all on it…it’s a real shame
Well balls. I was 173,328 miles away from reaching the moon :-/
Is that what that was!? I had that on my phone like a while back, but I didn’t know what I did to view that.
Lately I’ve been GPSing a WHOLE lot and I wanted to see how many miles I had left to the moon, but couldn’t find it. =.S
I’m so sad. It was Google Latitude and now that’s going away. =./
you can still go to latitude.google.com and look at your data in dashboard. You can even export the data to a spreadsheet.
I haven’t been using Google Latitude though. I’ve restarted my phone enough times. LoL!!
But I have been using the same account. Maybe it’s been adding up. Hmm… I’ll go have a look.
EDIT: 215,950 more miles to the Moon
Oh my gosh!! You must have been cruising everywhere. LoL!!
ah – you have to be signed in to latitude for it to work :-/
Anyone else also find offline maps minimally useful only because search didn’t work offline?
No. It allows you to save maps for destinations outside the country/dataplan. I used my phone as a pocket map/gps while driving around India, Canada, and the Caribbean recently.
This was such a great feature and useful to us for many years. But we already started using Life360 and it’s excellent, also shows locations of sex offenders.
There are a lot of sex offenders out there.
Yeah but Life360 only allows you to add 2 location like Home and Work, and up to 6 family members (unless you want to pay for their premium service, which still doesn’t cut it). Google Latitude was free for anyone with an account and you could share with whoever and as many people as you want.
Really sorry to see this one go. Why can’t they leave it in maps and share it to G+ (my check ins are already being shared from maps to there).
Facebook is about to turn up the heat on search. Google has to tie as much as they can into Google+ in order to prepare for the future battles they will find themselves in with Facebook. The more they can get you to adopt g+ the higher their chances are for competing. It sucks but that is clearly their focus right now and should be.
They should just combine all google services into one big service and call it…….wait for it……wait for it……GOOGLE. Then you wouldn’t have 50 different apps on your phone that all say Google in one way or another and all have their own unique icon that make no sense. Just make one app that handles everything and make the icon a big G.
Already turned on my location in g+ for family to see.
I hope Google buys the Saga app to replace Latitude. Saga has definitely something interesting going on there, not quite the same purpose as Latitude, but I think Saga is definitely more useful in terms of location history and identifying trends. Interesting stuff!
This is mixed for me. I have used it a couple times, mostly just novelty between me and a buddy out of state. He would hit me up and say, “See where I am right now!” I’d use latitude to locate and I would find him mountain biking a trail in Mountain View Cali then respond, “AHOLE!”. Other than that, never got any real use for it. Actually, take that back- a buddy and I used this service to locate his device. One morning his old HTC Sensation decided to pop out of his pocket while riding his motorcycle to work. When he arrived, he searched up and down for his phone to no avail. I finally got the bright idea to “locate him” using latitude. Low and behold there is was, sitting on a corner down the road from us. He quickly ran down the road and retrieved it. Sadly(maybe, it was afterall an HTC Sensation) it had been ran over but still on and running him CM Rom :)
What’s worse: the api is gone, only way to set G+ location is Android or IOS app…
What’s the Google Latitude alternative?
My friends and family use is all the time. I just open the app and can see straight away where everyone is.
I’ve tried Glymse, Moby & Life360. They all suck compared to latitude. With having to use timers to set for the ammount of time your location is shared.
I want an app that I can open up and see where my family and friends are and any given time that is cross-platform (Android & iOS). This is why Google Latitude was awesome. I hate Google’s changes.
It makes sense if they integrate reader and latitude into google+. If it gets more people using it, maybe we can finally lose Facebook.
If you haven’t checked out Life360 as a family location tool, this is the perfect time! We’re 40M users strong and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon! #employee
Never liked it so I wont miss it
How long have you been married? There’s no way in hell I’m letting my
wife monitor my location. Not because I’m a cheating bastard, but
because I do have things to do she’s better not knowing about.please visit it