Google Latitude To Be A Web App

Google announced that they would be creating a mobile version of Google Latitude for the iPhone and iPod touch way back in February, and at that time they stated it would be available "very soon."  Obviously very soon never came, but it now makes sense as to why Google has taken so long to finally bring the service over to the iPhone.  It's because they were waiting for Mobile Safari to get updated. TechCrunch is reporting that, during Google's keynote address at the Google I/O conference, they showed off a working version of Latitude on the iPhone.  Latitude has been available on many other platforms, including Google's own Android for quite some time now, but Google has been holding off on an iPhone version because of HTML 5 support:

But also interesting is that the reason Google has been waiting for the 3.0 software is because it’s not actually creating a native iPhone app for Latitude — as all other location-based services on the iPhone are — instead it’s using the Safari web browser to run Latitude. Thanks to HTML 5, Safari will be able to access a user’s location information and Latitude will be able to access that as well (provided the user gives permission). This will put it on par with what Google is doing in its browser for Android.

There you have it, Google has no intentions of creating a separate Latitude application for the iPhone as many previously thought.  Google was simply waiting for Mobile Safari to be able to access a user's location information. Not having a dedicated Latitude app won't be the worst thing in the world, because at least we know it will be available for free. And don't worry, Latitude will be just fine as a web app because Google is the king of web apps after all.

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