Wednesday, Google Incorporated released its location-tracking service called Latitude, which makes use of the GPS hardware that smartphones such as the Android, the BlackBerry and the Windows Mobile gadgets work on.

Google Latitude enables a user to determine their position on a map and also share that information with their friends.

For those who already have a Google Account, the way to come to benefit from the service is to add Latitude to their iGoogle page on the Internet, while another option entails simply downloading the latest version of the Google Mobile app, which has the Latitude tool built in.

Afterwards, users should add several friends with whom they want to share their location and whom they can select from their Gmail contact list or enter their e-mail addresses manually.

Where the actual sharing of their location is concerned, users have three privacy options, letting Google Latitude determine the location and share it with friends automatically, setting the location manually by entering an address or city or hiding their location entirely.

Once a user sets their preferences, the latter are universally applied to all the friends in the list, yet users have the possibility to alter their sharing options for each friend individually.

The Google Latitude service works in most of the United States and in 27 other countries, still when users are located in rural areas with no phone coverage, they become impossible to track down.

In addition, it is only accurate to within approximately half a mile.

Google Inc has announced that it was planning to add the Latitute tool to Apple iPhones and several Sony Ericsson gadgets in the near future.