It's been a long time coming, presumably, but finally (and I don't use the 'F-bomb' lightly here), today Google announced that Maps is receiving a real-time location sharing feature. You'll be able to share your location directly inside Maps, in real time, including navigation routes. How we've managed to go without this in Maps given how long Android and smartphone GPS have been things, I'm not sure.

The feature is dead simple to use: there's a new option in the slideout bar in the Maps app for location sharing. From there, pick contacts to share your location with and for how long (or indefinitely). That's it - you'll then show up as a little face-bubble in their Google Maps app. You can share with groups of people, and you can also initiate the share directly from inside the navigation UI when in the car. Nice.

The feature will roll out "soon" worldwide, according to the official Google blog post.