Google Latitude retired

[gjm11]

I don't personally care about Latitude, but it does seem recently that Google have been on a crusade to ruin Google Maps on mobile devices. The two most noteworthy instances: (1) screwing up the offline-maps feature (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/Ck_Pd6UgZ... -- but they've slightly walked this back: see https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3246076) and (2) adding advertisements to the Android version of Maps: http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/attract-new-customers-... (I don't mind this at all on the web version of Maps, where I'm usually on a display with plenty of pixels, but on a mobile device that's a whole lot of space being taken up by advertisements instead of actually useful information).

[zaidf]

Google Maps on iOS has been destroyed. It is incredible how good solid apps commit suicide. For example, I entered "34th and 6th ave ny,ny" for my end destination. Soon as I submit, it renames it to "34th Street Partnership". Few weeks ago it would rename to some chiropractor's office a full avenue away.

Before I upgraded my iOS, I'd come to rely on Maps as a regular part of my life and couldn't live without it. But now it's just a painful experience.

This is the algorithm gone extraordinarily wrong. I really wonder if the guys who make decisions to change the UI or functionality of highly rated apps ever take time to really use their own creation. Because if they did, I don't see how they'd continue with their botched modifications to what was once a great app.

[wpietri]

My current theory is that this is a simple extortion ploy: After getting me to depend on Android Google Maps, they have replaced it with something unusable. Shortly they will release Google Maps Classic for $49.95/year. I will happily pay that; it's cheaper than the blood pressure medication I'd need to counteract all the rage-inducing misfeatures they've put in the latest version.

[abhiv]

Google Maps on my Android (Galaxy Nexus) phone has now developed an annoying habit of making the keyboard disappear while I'm typing in an address. I type in a couple of letters and the keyboard slides out. I tap again in the input box to bring it back up, type in another letter, and then it slides out again.

I haven't been able to figure out a repeatable way to get this to happen, but it seems to have started happening in the last few weeks. Rebooting the phone usually makes it go away, but only for a short while. I haven't seen this weird keyboard disappearing behavior in any other app, so it makes me think it's something specific to Google Maps. It's making the app pretty much unusable.

Anyone else seeing this?

[_delirium]

I'd recommend moving to one of the OpenStreetMaps apps for offline usage. They allow basic things like the ability to search for points of interest while offline, so you can do things like ask where the Metropolitan Museum of Art is and get a pointer on the map. Google Maps doesn't really provide a proper offline mode with such functionality, and never has. All they do is cache images that they let you zoom/pan, and not even that works properly.

[bane]

Don't worry, I'm on the beta for the new web google maps and after being impressed with it initially, found it borderline unusable.

[DanTheManPR]

They seem to be on a crusade to strip useful features out of their Android app.

[davidw]

Don't forget that from one day to the next they also killed terrain mode for maps on Android. That one made me very grumpy.

[Shooti]

Sponsored locations were already a part of the old Android and iOS apps, so its more accurate to say that they're bringing the ads back to the new design.

[ta092838]

Google's push towards Google+ reminds me of Microsoft's arrogance in forcing their vision of Windows 8. An established company trying to get another piece of the pie that is not their core competency. It's too bad Google is trying to get into the social game. I wish they would stick to the "serious" endeavors that started out with, more Wolfram Alpha, less Facebook. They don't have to own the entire internet, just do things that they can do better than anyone else...

[spankalee]

The "push" to Google+ is more trying to correct the mistakes of the past where for N products that had a sharing feature, there were at least N ways of sharing things. That's just broken, confusing and cumbersome for users. G+ the platform is just the sharing layer for all Google products. G+ the stream is almost a separate thing that uses G+ the platform for sharing posts.

So now it's supposed to be ~1 way of sharing for all products. Latitude was location sharing, therefore the sharing should be integrated with G+. Normally doing the sharing via G+ wouldn't completely obsolete a product, but if _all_ a product does is share, it's ripe to be a feature of G+ rather than it's own product. That's what happened here.

[hcarvalhoalves]

The "serious" endeavors, like glasses and self-driving cars are not their core business. Not even search or email are. Their core business is advertising, and social media is what advertisers want today.

Google is largely associated with innovation and they make everything to keep this image, but at the bottom their business is actually pretty boring: finding ways to show you an ad.

[yuhong]

Ah, Vic Gundotra. Someone posted this on Slashdot, BTW: http://search.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2770327&cid=39598...

[psbp]

I don't get this complaint. All of these services have a social component built in, so why not just put them all under one umbrella? It's not like Google+ does anything remarkably bad.

[davidw]

Location history, however is here: https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0

I'm glad they kept that, I find it quite handy for several things, including as a cross check on how much time I spend at $client.

[whathappenedto]

I used location history a lot, and I am now looking into other gps logging apps because they removed API access to history. The export you can do is only KML and doesn't have information like accuracy for each coordinate, leading to a bunch of non-sense locations you can't easily filter out. I wish they simply had an easy way to subscribe to your own location data, because otherwise many applications are impossible (such as using your real-time location, or for personal analytics).

[testbro]

For anyone wanting to liberate their data from here, paste this into the JS console with the history page open (only tested in Chrome):

    var time = time=new Date("2010/01/01").getTime(); //set this to start date
    setInterval(function(){
	window.location="https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0/kml?startTime=" + time + "&endTime=" + (time + 2678400000);
    	time += 2678400000
    }, 2000)

Doesn't know when to stop, so close the tab when you have all the data you want.

[jes5199]

Sigh. Latitude put Loopt out of business. Now we don't have Loopt and we don't have Latitude.

Sharing location on G+ is not the same use case at all.

[saurik]

I don't understand why Google kills and replaces things seemingly with no thought of migration paths. Anyone know more about what goes on internally that causes companies to just throw up their hands in defeat on a product, forcing users to just start over? Is it really that hard to shim the Latitude APIs over the new service?

[eyeareque]

From what I can tell their migration path is "Move to Google+". I can't tell if that is viable, but it does make sense from Google's perspective.

[Shooti]

Latitudes manager seems happy with the decision: https://plus.google.com/+jlapenna/posts/deBP7kj7rMi

Also he offers plenty of behind the scenes reasoning in replies to the thread, such as this:

"We felt that we'd be able to get quicker feature parity and better newer features by cutting over now than waiting."

[skeletonjelly]

So they are going for feature parity? Woo! I really miss the freshness value (x minutes ago) and the accuracy radius.

[kalleboo]

This was handy, I'll miss it. Luckily my SO is an iPhone user so I still have her on Find My Friends...

As the Google wind-down goes on, I've lost all trust in them to keep any of their services running. I won't invest any more time into a new Google service anymore. The only question right now is Google Apps email. I like their Gmail iOS app, but I might switch to another ActiveSync provider (for iOS push support).

[hnriot]

I wonder how long maps.google.com keeps classic mode. I loathe the new maps, it's sluggish and trying to be too much.

[hamburglar]

Yeah, I frequently find myself clicking back over to classic because I simply can't figure out how to do what I want in the new mode. When they take away my ability to do that, I'll groan and curse and increment my "reasons not to get excited about the Next Big Thing from Google" counter.

[bane]

> it's sluggish and trying to be too much

while amazingly providing less information

[jes5199]

I don't know what you're talking about - can you show me screenshots of before and after?

[yock]

The incredibly frustrating thing about this is that they have continued offering location services as part of Google+, but they've retired a service that works on iOS for one that does not. This strikes me as an incredibly user-hostile action.

[enjo]

What's the best alternative for Android users?

[caffeineninja]

Try Life360. While family-oriented only in name and marketing at the moment, we are cross-platform on iOS and Android and also have a Latitude importer.

http://www.life360.com/latitude

We're also working on some new features that will make the app less "family oriented" and more universal for everyone.

[spankalee]

It's in the blog post, location sharing has moved to Google+.

Here's the link from the post: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2998354?p=plus_locati...

[Kylekramer]

Depends on use case. Location history, you can just keep using Google Maps. Telling others where you are: http://www.glympse.com/, but that is more for a specific period of time rather than passively sharing it as Latitude did.

[ckubal]

Quick plug for something we're working on that's related: chronos, launched on Android this week http://bit.ly/chronos-android (iOS next week: http://www.getchronos.com)

We passively track how you spend your time – you don't have to do anything, and it lets you know where you’ve gone, with whom, and breaks your time into categories (work, sleep, exercise, home, social, etc.).

-charlie

[acomjean]

I think there integrating location finding into google+. Its not a great answer, because I'm not sure how location sharing works in google+, but under preferences you can make you location available. Then when people click on your profile they can see where you are.

As someone who used to use latitude occasionally to get together and find friends (fairs, small towns)I think I'll miss it.

[swax]

I have an app 'locacha' that lets you share your location with friends in a chat room.

[swalsh]

There was a real use case for latitude, but I don't feel like they pulled it off right. I live in MA, and my brother lives in WI. We decided to meet each other in NY once while he was with friends. We used latitude as a way to communicate our location as we tried to find each other. It worked a lot better than saying "meet me at the shake shack" since neither of us knew the area.

The problem with it though was it was slow, thus typically outdated. So 90% of the time the information was simply not useful.

[CedricGatay]

Hi there, I wanted to let you know the Android / Web application we made with a friend, it is called lclz.in (http://lclz.in). We created it because the end of Google Latitude and the lack for such app.

Lets explain it with a real use case, I want to meet my friend at an open air music festival with a lot of attendees. The classic way of doing it is calling him, but with the heavy music we will barely understand each other, plus it will be difficult to describe where we are to meet.

That's where the application will help : you select the contact you want to meet, it sends a SMS (or use the share dialog) requesting its location. The text contains a link to a site allowing any decent smartphone (even iOS/Blackberry/Windows Phone) to geolocalize him. Once done, you will get a notification on your phone displaying him on a map !

That's the beginning of the app, we've got a full backlog of ideas for the upcoming releases. Meanwhile, feel free to install, use, and tell what you would have loved to see in it.