[hug]

Google Hangouts solves this problem in a much more sane way -- Whenever my girlfriend sends me "where are you?" on hangouts, the application prompts me to send a map pin.

This solution probably isn't particularly novel, but it's probably better than carte blanche location access, in the opinion of most people.

[JeremyNT]

Google also provides opt-in location tracking via Google+ [0]. You specify who can view your location, and whether it is fine (GPS coordinates) or course (city-level).

My wife and I use this service and find it quite useful - it seems like a much more sane way to handle location sharing than to simply attach your exact location to every message you send by default.

Sadly, since it's buried in Google+, most people are probably unaware of it.

[0] https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2998354?hl=en

[jgroszko]

Yeah, this was supposed to be the replacement for Latitude right? You have to know exactly where it is in the app though to find it, it's really not very discoverable