Google Latitude is closing: the service officially disappears on August 9th, and users are encouraged to use geotagging in Google+.
The official confirmation has arrived for news that had been circulating, albeit without timely confirmation: Google Latitude is coming to an end.
The geolocation-based service will indeed shut down on August 9, 2013, as explained to users in a post published on the official Google blog.
Google Latitude is being closed because, in light of the most recent updates to various Mountain View products, the focus is shifting towards streamlining and simplifying the use of map-related functionalities.
In practice, Google Latitude will no longer be included in the Google Maps update for Android, nor will it be available for iOS devices.
Consequently, the Latitude friends list will disappear, along with past check-ins and geotags.
It was precisely this detail, observed from the first hours of downloading the latest Google Maps version, that alerted the more attentive users. Indeed, this observation was soon after “certified” by the Google staff.
The Google Latitude service, launched in 2009, is still quite widely used today to share one’s location and track the movements of friends also subscribed to the service.
In this case as well, Google is attempting to migrate this type of sharing within Google+, thus gradually phasing out other products to channel the flow of information in a single direction.
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