Google Latitude Reaches iPhone, But It’s Limited

Interesting development today on the mobile scene: Google has released Latitude, its location-aware software, for the iPhone and iPod Touch — but as a web application rather than a native iPhone app. Ergo, Latitude users will only be able to access the program via the iPhone’s Safari web browser, which makes continuous updates an impossibility and puts Latitude at a serious disadvantage to competitors like Brightkite and Loopt.

In its announcement today, Google said it was Apple that wanted Latitude to be developed as a web application. And Google admitted to the limitations that face Latitude in such a format:

“Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile.”

For those not familiar with the service, Latitude lets friends share their locations with one another and send messages back and forth. But without the continuous updates mentioned above, the software’s usefulness on the iPhone is somewhat limited. It makes sense to wonder if Apple is perhaps planning to bake similar functionality into a future upgrade of the native Maps app, but that’s pure speculation on my part.

The Latitude web app is available only to OS 3.0 users above on the iPhone or iPod Touch, and only in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Google says it hopes to add more countries soon.