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Google Latitude Comes to the App Store

Monday December 13, 2010 5:44 am PST by Eric Slivka

Google today officially debuted its Google Latitude application on the App Store, bringing a native iOS app experience to users of the company's location-sharing service for the first time.

With Google Latitude, see where your friends are right now. Latitude lets you stay in touch with your friends and family by making it easy to share where you are and see each other on a map.

With Latitude, you can:
- See your friends on a map - find out who's nearby and meet up.
- Share your location continuously with whomever you choose - help friends and family stay in touch with you, even when you cant take out your phone.
- Control your privacy - share only city-level location, hide your location, or turn off background updating at any time.

The application briefly went live in some countries last week, but was quickly pulled for unknown reasons. That version was labeled 1.0.0, while today's version is labeled 2.0.0.346, so perhaps a significant issue with the initial release was discovered as it was being rolled out.

Google Latitude launched in February 2009, but did not initially offer support for iPhone users. The company rolled out a web app version of Google Latitude for iPhone users in July 2009, noting that Apple had requested that Google utilize a web app rather than a native App Store app over fears that users might confuse a Google Latitude app with the built-in Maps app on iOS.

Back in September, Apple published its App Store review guidelines for the first time, increasing transparency and relaxing some of the earlier restrictions on App Store content.

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