Google Latitude Gets Yahoo Personal on Google Talk, Gmail Chat

Google has ported its Latitude application to Google Talk and Gmail Chat, allowing users to post their real-time location onto those Google sites. In addition, another application publishes the user’s Latitude location to their blog or Web site. Geo-location solutions are a growing part of the IT industry, with both Google and Yahoo releasing applications for geographical pinpointing.

Google announced, on May 4, two new applications for its Google Latitude service, which allows users to both post their own real-time location on a map while also seeing the position of any other friends who use the service. The new programs expand the service’s functionality by posting the user’s location to either a personal blog or Web site, or else Google Talk and Gmail Chat.
Having originally made its debut on Feb. 4, Google Latitude is now available on Android-powered devices with Maps v3.0 and above, most BlackBerry devices, most devices with Windows Mobile 5.0 and above, and most Symbian S60 devices. Functionality for the iPhone and iPod touch is apparently "coming soon," according to Google’s Web site.
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The two new applications are Google Talk location status (beta), which updates the user’s Google Talk or Gmail chat status message with their Latitude location, and Google Public Location Badge, which publishes the user’s Latitude location on their blog or personal Web site.
"You can choose to show just the city that you are in or you can have your device’s location detected automatically, using GPS, Wi-Fi, or cell tower ID, which provides a more specific location," Rohan Seth and Chris Lambert, software engineers for Google Mobile, wrote in a May 4 corporate blog posting.
Google rival Yahoo already attempted to counter Latitude with a Facebook application, called Friends on Fire, that used the Fire Eagle geo-location platform to let users display their real-time location on a map. Yahoo originally launched Fire Eagle in August 2008.
And for anyone whose feels that Google expanding Latitude is yet another way in which the search engine giant is slowly invading the collective privacy, there is always the option to switch off – or never switch on – the service entirely.

paidContent.org - Why IAC Covets Yahoo Personals

So what if IAC (NSDQ: IACI) decided to go after Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Personals, as Barry Diller (pictured, right) suggested it might Wednesday? A combination of the two properties would certainly make strategic sense. Bernstein & Co. Analyst Jeffrey Lindsay points out in a report that IAC's Match.com already provides personal listings on MSN and AOL (NYSE: TWX), so by adding Yahoo Personals, it would now presumably have access to all three major portals. More heft (together Yahoo Personals and Match.com would bring in double the unique visitors as their nearest competitor, according to comScore) would also help fend off growing competition from free, exclusively ad-supported dating sites. And perhaps most importantly for IAC, it would allow the company to double-down on what is likely already its best-performing business.
Diller raised the possibility of an acquisition during IAC's earnings call Wednesday, saying: "We'd love to (have) Yahoo Personals, and I think there is some initial discussion about that, whether they're going away or not is, of course, enormously speculative." Enormously speculative is probably too strong. Yahoo is busy jettisoning non-core assets under new CEO Carol Bartz, and the dating site would likely fit the bill. HotJobs reportedly is on the block and GeoCities is being shuttered soon.

Citigroup's Mark Mahaney puts Yahoo Personal's value at $500 million, working under the assumption that Yahoo Personals brings in just as much money as Match.com. In the past, IAC executives have said that they would prefer smaller acquisitions. But asked during the call, whether he would consider an acquisition in the range of $500 million to $1 billion, Diller said "it would be on the plate." He cautioned though that it would have to bolster a key business for the company. Like Match.com, perhaps?