Stalking my kids on Google Maps

Google Maps has this cool feature called location sharing. It’s a resurrection of a service that they used to provide called Latitude. I was sad when Google shut that service down. And I’m very happy that something like it is back up.

Here’s how it works.

To share your location you need to use the Google Maps app on a mobile device. From the hamburger menu, choose Share Location. You’ll get a screen that lists people who are sharing with you and any who you have shared with. A plus icon in the upper-right hand corner lets you change your sharing settings—including adding and removing people from your list.

I share my location with my kids, and I share all the time.

When you decide to share your location with someone, Google will send them a notification email. They can choose to back, or not.

FourFive of my six kids share with me, pretty much all the time. I love the other twoone anyway.

Right now Mira, John, and their kids are traveling by RV out west. Dana, Daniel, and Siena are traveling in Spain. And Alyssa and Konrad and kids just back from a trip to Maine are now at home.

Location updates are irregular. Sometimes every couple of minutes sometimes not for several hours. I can live with that.

In the browser version of Maps, I use Street View to see what my kids might be seeing. I zoom on their location, grab the street view icon and drop it near their last location, look around, or move along the road they are on to see what they might be seeing.

Then I teleport back to my computer.

Yay internet! Yay Google Maps. Yay kids who share location with me.

Yay, people reading my blog and changing their choices!

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