Google Latitude: Big Brother Personified?

With more technology comes the ability to track people down. That’s sometimes a good thing… and sometimes not. Here’s one new invention that I can see no good reason for: Google Latitude.

Now don’t get me wrong. The folks at Google are an amazing bunch. They have created a whole new verb to our lexicon (just “google it”) and they have amazing software to help business owners track visits to their website and they have changed the face of the Internet.

But this new tool involves downloading software onto a smartphone so that you can always track where the phone is. Phones have GPS units in them now, of course, but your average joe can’t just put your number in and track you down.

With Google Latitude now, however, they can.

One article I read speculated that this would be a good tool to track down telecommuters. The reasoning being that you give your employee one of these smarthphones and if “you suspect a rogue employee of slacking at the beach when she claims she’s in your client’s server room, you’ll have a handy tool for finding out the truth.”

But if your remote employee gets all their work done and does a great job, why would you need to spy on them? And if they ARE at the beach, who really cares? The issue isn’t the fact that they are at the beach but not getting their work done. The conversation needs to be about their work ethic and not where they do their work.

I’m not sure I would buy one of these, but I’m sure there are folks that might find this software useful. What do you think?