Google's risky new product

My taxi driver from LaGuardia last night would not or could not write down the address of the hotel I was going to. He must have asked me and re-asked me four times. Not trusting his memory, I tried to track his path on my PDA. Even though the AT&T gauge showed 3G availability and 5 bars most of the way, I could not access the data network. No Google Maps or MS Live Search. And this in one of the most densely populated areas in the country not a Mountain State where the coverage is really poor.

In the meantime, Google was preparing to launch Latitude "a tool that could help parents keep tabs on their children's locations". With the patchy nature of our mobile networks, is Google building expectations beyond what the carriers can deliver?

Also, as I wrote last year, cell tower triangulation can lead to wildly wrong location information.

If Google wants to position it as a fun, social networking application, fine. But to tell parents they can monitor where their kids or babysitters with their kids are, is to me a bit risky.