IMAGINE if your boss could pin-point exactly where you are at all times through your mobile phone.
It may soon become a reality with the launch of Google’s latest spying tool.
For just $15 per employee, per month, Google Maps Coordinate will allow bosses to keep track of their employees' whereabouts when they're not in the office and send them instructions in real-time.
Employees will become moving pin-points on a Google Map that the boss can watch from the office.
The mobile app, which turns a mobile phone into a live tracking device, was launched today and is designed to "organise teams on the move". And, unless the employee turns off the device, those days of sneaking off for that long lunch will be over.
It will be so accurate that it will even be able to locate workers when they are inside buildings where GPS satellites cannot detect the phone, according to Google’s senior product manager Daniel Chu.
Mr Chu said the device would be popular across a number of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, sales teams and repair services.
"Imagine you are a call centre operator at an electric utility company. A call comes in reporting a downed powerline in one of the northern suburbs of your city, and an entire neighbourhood is without power," Mr Chu said.
"You need to quickly dispatch one of your line repairers to the site, which is almost an hour away. To save time and get the power back up quickly, you want to know which line repairers are already in the area and send them the relevant information about the job. That’s where Google Maps Coordinate comes in."
Mr Chu said that, according to research firm IDC, the number of mobile workers would be more than 1.3 billion by 2015 which is 37 per cent of the total workforce.
Employees who are worried about privacy will be able to turn off the tracking device during times such as their lunch breaks and will also be able to see when they are being tracked through a notification on their screen.
So far the app is only compatible with Android, so employees with iPhones and iPads are safe from being spied on - for the moment.
Mr Chu said Google engineers were busy at work hoping to make the app compatible with Apple’s iOS within the next 12 months.
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