Around the Net
Attack Of The Foursquare Killers
- TechCrunch et al., Friday, May 7, 2010 3:19 PM
Largely ignored by industry pundits until now, the search giant's location-based service has some 8 million registered users, 3 million of whom are presently "active." Compare that to Foursquare's measly million-odd users, and MyTown's roughly 2 million.
"Latitude is not dead," Google's Steve Lee said Thursday on an industry panel, according to TechCrunch. Translation, according to TechCrunch: "Hey Foursquare and MyTown, suck it."
According to Lee, Latitude has grown 30% per month each month this year so far, which is largely attributed to the strong growth of Google's Android mobile operating system. Over 10% of all Android users are using Latitude, said Lee, which, while notable, still leaves plenty of room for growth.
Similarly, Lee blames poor iPhone support for Latitude's failure to capture the imaginations of even more users -- and industry wonks.
Adds TechCrunch: "While he wouldn't specifically speak to Google's plans, Lee also hinted that Latitude would soon have a check-in component."
Meanwhile, Martin May, co-founder of location-based service Brightkite, suggested Thursday during the same panel that the industry should work together on an open database of location data, Venture Beat reports.
Not surprisingly, Google's Lee shot down the idea, "saying that there are tremendous technical challenges to building an open, uniform database for everyone to use," Venture Beat reports. "Not only that, there are major licensing issues to resolve before this kind of step could be taken."
Bigger picture, the popularity of Latitude in the face of various challenges, "just goes to show you how many people don't care about privacy," notes The Register. "Latitude doesn't just share your location with friends, it shares it with Google -- which is already collecting so much else about everything you do."
