Google's new Trusted Contacts app lets you share your location during emergencies
It's basically Google Latitude, three years later — When Google discontinued Latitude in 2013, it never truly made a replacement for its version of iOS's Find My Friend.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google killed Latitude in 2013 and left a hole where its Find My Friends-style location sharing used to be; Trusted Contacts is the belated answer, built specifically around emergency check-ins rather than ambient tracking.
The arc that follows is instructive: within months, Google folded general-purpose location sharing directly into Maps with its time-limited and ongoing sharing feature, and by late 2020 it retired the standalone app entirely, pointing users to Maps instead via the Trusted Contacts shutdown.
First-order effects
- Users gain an emergency-specific way to request or grant a contact's location on Android, closing the gap left when Latitude was discontinued three years earlier.
Second-order effects
- Once Google ships native location sharing inside Google Maps in 2017, the standalone app loses its reason to exist — the platform feature absorbs the point solution.
Third-order effects
- Single-purpose safety apps give way to location sharing embedded in platforms people already use daily, a shift that culminates in location-sharing apps becoming routine social infrastructure among young users per the Find My friendship coverage.
The trend: Consumer location sharing is consolidating from dedicated apps into default platform features, with emergency use cases folded into maps and OS-level tools rather than standalone products.