I was really excited to see and use Google Latitude. I had dreams of location-aware social networking and the ability to locate my phone, al la MobileMe’s ‘Find My iPhone’. Last night, Google announced Latitude was available for the iPhone – and it was a webapp, not a native application. I dutifully loaded the website and Safari asked my permission to use location services. I agreed. Then the website asked to use location services. I again agreed.

This is where it gets bad.

The webapp is pretty much a web version of the Maps application, with the added benefit of showing your friends where you are. There is even an overlay when you hit the ‘Menu’ button with the same kinds of things you can do in the Maps application – “Search”, “Show Traffic”, “Satellite View”, etc. The same gestures work in the web app as do in the Maps application. Pinch to zoom, etc. However, it’s a web app, so there’s a nasty unrefined feeling about it that you don’t have in the native client. Page elements don’t update smoothly or look nearly as nice.

Putting that aside, however, there’s something else that’s really bad about the application. It’s how you select who can see your location status.

To let people see where you are, you need to invite them individually. I have no problem with that. It’s much better than letting the whole world know where I am at any given moment. The problem is with the address book system. It ties into your Gmail account, and if you’re not signed into Gmail, it can’t load the address book. No descriptive warnings, just an error that says “Can’t load address book data”. You just have to go log in yourself. Once you’re logged in, you can see the groups of addresses you have saved/setup in Gmail Contacts. Which is great, unless like me, almost all of your friends have more than one email address. My brother comes up 8 times, and it only shows his name over and over again, not his various email addresses. This is much less than useful.

So, here’s my verdict on Google Latitude for the iPhone – avoid until they really overhaul the interface and the address book. Or, better yet, simply incorporate the features of sharing your location into the Maps application directly.