You will now be able to track the locations of your family members and friends through their mobile phones. Yes, Google, on Wednesday, started a new service to help mobile phone & wireless device users share their whereabouts with their family and friends.

Christened as Google Latitude, which is an add-on to the latest version of Google Maps mobile software, finds your location automatically, either thru your mobile base station triangulation or via GPS on your smartphone, and then broadcasts the information to the people on your Google contacts list. The service also lets you choose the people that you want to share your locations with, and it also lets you set your location, according to your choice.

In its blog, Google said, "Fun aside, we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see."

Similar to the service offered by privately-held Loopt, Google Latitude works fine with the smartphones, including Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile devices. According to Google, the service will soon be supported by Apple iPhone, Google's own Android OS, iTouch and many Sony Ericsson devices.

Google announced that Latitude is also available as an iGoogle Gadget on the PC; it allows you setting your location from your computer, and it also lets you know the locations of your friends through you PC. Google Latitude is currently available for the users in 27 countries.