Someone had to say it, right?  Hahaha…I know.

I want people to calm down over Google’s latest app Latitude .  The privacy advocates specifically.  It’s not like anyone is being forced to install or use the application.  (Although, it does come bundled with Maps for the mobile phones.)  Even if Maps is installed, someone still needs to sign in with a user name and password to allow Latitude access to the phone’s GPS information.  Even still, a user can specify what amount of location based information is available (near exact, city-wide, or not at all.)  So please, dear everyone who is upset, please calm yourselves.

Not that I’m a fan of advertising, but location based advertisements seem like a cool idea.  I can only imagine walking through town, Google knowing exactly where I am and alerting me to a nearby Happy Hour deal.  Stellar move, Google.  And I don’t have to share my actual location with anyone, which I already am willing to do with services such as Brightkite . (Again, only to select people.)

I want all these services to continue improving, so I hope Google doesn’t cave and shut down its Latitude service.  I think Google did a pretty good job preempting the privacy nuts with a lot of privacy-control features already built-in, but we’ll see what happens.  In the meanwhile, you can catch my Brightkite updates through Twitter or Friendfeed.  Feel free to buy me a coffee if you’re in the area.

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Calm Your Latitude was first posted to justinll.com on February 5, 2009.