Google Latitude Now Available for iPhone

The world’s largest online search company, Google, today made available its Google Latitude application for Apple iOS devices [iTunes], after the app was approved by Apple for use in its iOS powered devices like the company’s hugely successful iPhone smartphone.

Google Latitude is a social location sharing service that allows friends to show their current location in real-time through their mobile device, which is displayed in Google Maps, for all of their approved friends to see.

The service is entirely opt-in; with privacy features that ensure not just any person could see your location.

 Google Latitude has already been available on other mobile platforms, such as the BlackBerry and Symbian platforms since 2009, but has only now become available on Apple iOS devices, after an apparent difficulty in getting the app approved by Apple’s notorious app store review and approval team.

This was not the first time Google had trouble in getting its apps approved into Apple’s app store; the company also had difficulty in getting Google Goggles approved, until more recently on August 24 when the Google Goggles app was finally approved for the iPhone. And no, we haven’t forgotten the troubles with Google Voice, either.

More recently, Apple has changed internal policies in an attempt to make its app store review process more transparent, after numerous complaints, including by Google, to government agencies citing anti-trust concerns and unfair competition.

In early September of this year, Apple for the first time published a set of governing principles that the company uses to approve or reject applications, and even went on to “relax all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps,”

Multi-tasking is also supported on the Latitude iPhone app, allowing the app to continue to monitor and publish your GPS location in the background.

The application is also supported on the iPad, the iPod Touch, and previous generation iPhone devices.

Google says there are currently more than 9-million mobile users who use the service.