Yesterday, the Google geo development team released the Latitude GeoRSS feed into the wild through an API. I find it surprising that Google is opening up its users’ geo-data this fast. Here’s why:

In this very young geo-location space, Google is taking a major lead with Android. It turns them into one of the rare Web-based service that tracks directly users’ location. Android’s numbers aren’t tearing the roof off, but they are not bad either: In March, AdMob reported that Android phones experienced a 44% monthly growth are in the first months after launch, while the iPhone got a 88% monthly growth rate (however, I would like to compare the marketing spend of both companies for the launch, Apple obviously had more buzz).

The reason this is an advantage for Google is mobile advertising. The Web on mobile will probably become the most profitable advertising channel for brands and local advertisers alike. A plethora of ad networks are popping up in this space. However, while focusing on serving ads, those ad networks will have to buy the geo-data juice from data providers… Like Google: Latitude encourages mobile users’ to share their location voluntarily and regularly. Payday!

So why is Google releasing its geo-juice so fast?

We have tried to make this process as easy as possible, but we realize there is an entirely different set of people (you guys, the developers!) that want to do more interesting things with their location.

In other words, they are creating a developers’ ecosystem around their geo-data center, which creates many benefits:
- Start developing geo-advertising solutions on Google’s platform
- Develop good ideas for Adwords to integrate later
- Maybe develop an economy around Latitude (and Android?)
- Pioneer to become a leading geo data provider.

However, Google’s Achille’s heel in this story is its social networking potential: It’s close to being null. On Google, you search, you create documents, you watch videos, but Google doesn’t connect you with your close ones the way Facebook does. Their social graph algo is known to be a bit screwy. So they will need the help of somebody else to capture our location while we socialize on the go.

I have enabled the ’share your location publicly’. I don’t find it scary. I have the feeling that nobody really cares where I am anyway (except advertisers). And it’s not that accurate anyway. But I really like updating my gtalk with my location. Geekilicious!