”You can now share your location in real-time with Google Maps”

Although I guess it would want a phone signal in addition to GPS to send your position back to Google HQ.

And there’s why it’s not a Spot tracker 😆

Not fully rolled out yet. I can’t get it, can anyone here?

I had a maps update overnight but can’t see the functionality as yet.

nope

And there’s why it’s not a Spot tracker

Crafty plug:

I’m selling an Inreach tracker/messenger on ebay, like a Spot, but you can send texts from it to friends/relatives/mountain rescue via the iridium network as well as pair it with tracklogs and send SOS signals.

You’ve been able to do pretty much the same thing with ViewRanger’s ‘Buddy beacon’ feature for ages, but it has the same limitation – you need data connectivity to transmit.

You’ve been able to share location through Google+ for a few years now. (Signal-dependent, obviously)

The google+ share function got a major upgrade and release as “Trusted Contacts” in google play a few months back.

It’s a lower power consumption spot tracker, as well as emergency beacon and friend finder. You can request location of a Tursted Contact, and if they dont turn it down the phone will send a marker back to the requester after 5 mins. Handy to see if someone is en route to get an ETA but theyre not answering their phone while driving for example.

for live spot tracking my colleague and I use glympse. Its very handy if we are converging on a site and exploring the area/nearest bar.

The function described in the OPs link doesnt appear to be available to me yet on Android Maps.

You’ve been able to share location through Google+ for a few years now. (Signal-dependent, obviously)

Not impressed with it in G+ – it was much worse than before they hoiked it out of maps – half hour lag and more on the transmission of location. Don’t know whether it got better.

So its find friends for non-iphone users?
Or re-release of google latitude? <which was ace and sadly missed.

latitude – that was it!

The function described in the OPs link doesnt appear to be available to me yet on Android Maps.

Me neither.

for live spot tracking my colleague and I use glympse

another glympse user here as Its fast, accurate and doesn’t use too much data. Will have a nose at the google thing though