What’s the Point of Google Latitude?

Almost anybody who knows me, knows that I am pretty much a sucker for any new product Google rolls out.

One of their latest products, Google Latitude is pretty awesome.  But, I’ve been having a hard time finding a real application for the service, other than creeping myself out a little bit.

Google Latitude works with your cell phone’s GPS.  It has the ability to constantly ping your exact location and display for your friends to see.

The only people who can view your location, are those people you allow to see it.  This works very similar to somebody’s online status in Google Talk or AOL Instant Messenger.

I have a handful of Latitude buddies and it is kind of cool to see where everybody is, especially if they’re nearby.  But, I haven’t had a meet-up at a coffee shop because I discovered somebody was close by.

I can see the practicality of Google Latitude for parents to easily track their children’s location, or for family members to track each other down in an emergency situation.  But, other than that, I think the product is mostly a novelty in it’s current execution.

I guess I wasn’t too far off base, because it seems even the folks at Google see Latitude as a bit of a novelty right now:

Obviously Google sees a lot of value in providing location-based search, and I see the value in it, too.  When I search for “sushi restaurant”, odds are I’m most interested in the results that are closest to my current location.

Make your own at Google.com/LatitudeStunt!

Plus, there is a lot of value in hacking your own version of the Google Latitude Stunt.  Check out my version, “Chris is Hot“.

You can also make your own.

Now, here’s what I think would be awesome:

What if we made a game out of this.  We could assemble groups of people to create Latitude messages across large geographic areas.  I think it would be a lot of fun!

Who’s with me?