Google is doing some very exciting stuff right now, including Google Ocean and Google Latitude.

The first being extensive 3D mapping of – can you guess? – the world’s oceans, to make Google Earth more representative of the planet of a whole. The BBC have a gorgeous clip, which I won’t embed here as last time I tried that it was determined to auto-load, so I’m afraid you’ll have to be old school and click through to find out more.

Google Latitude is, according to Mashable, is a “very interesting application” for Mobile Mapping.

When it comes to privacy, Google seems to have done it right, since absolutely everything about Latitude is opt-in. You can control who sees your location, and choose which locations are visible (for example, you can lie about your location, manually setting it to something else). All of this can be set up for each individual Latitude friend. For example, you can set it up so that your wife always sees you at work. Why you’d want to do that, we leave to your imagination.

[....] I can imagine some users simply setting their location to always be visible to everyone; others might want to spin a complex web of deceit which will ultimately make their life miserable. It’s like a game; you can choose how interesting you want it to be.

I have to agree with Mashable, both on the point above on privacy and on their surprise about it being currently unavailable for the iPhone. According to the Google site Google Latitude is available on the following mobile devices “wherever Google Maps for mobile v3.0 and above is supported”:

• Android-powered devices with Maps v3.0 and above.
• Most color BlackBerry devices
• Most Windows Mobile 5.0 and above devices.
• Most Symbian S60 devices

and will be coming soon to US iPhones and iPod touch devices with the Google Mobile App as well as “Many Sony Ericsson devices”

A busy week at Google, nice one guys!