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Helio had this available in 2006 They called it "Buddy Beacon":

Buddy Beacon is the new way for Helio members to synchronize their social lives and tell friends where the fun is. Rather than calling or texting, Helio members can switch on their Buddy Beacon and use satellite technology to broadcast their location to the friends they add to their Buddy List. When they turn on Buddy Beacon, their Buddy List friends can see their location on a map along with a nearby address. Members can add up to 25 Buddies to their Buddy List. When members change locations and want to let everyone know the party is on the move, one simple command refreshes the location. Want to hide out? Just leave Buddy Beacon off to enjoy a night of privacy or to slip out the back of the club into the VIP room."

That's been out since 2006. It's been available for the iPhone since April 2008. Google is late to the party on this.

Nextel phones have complete GPS chip sets in them that are capable of getting a GPS fix even when no network is available. With a serial cable you can connect your Motorola i58/i88 or i730 to PC mapping software running on a laptop.
You can also sign-up for a free service like www.uLocate.com that can send maps and text descriptions of your location to your phone
Every other carrier that claims to have GPS phones has the data locked-up in some way. They are trying to figure out a way to charge you per fix and have not worked out how to do that yet. Until then only the 3 or 4 911 centers in the US that have installed E-911 equipment can tell where your phone is. I suspect they will open it up after some bad PR. Imagine a situation like the recent abduction and murder in Florida where the girl has a GPS cell phone but the authorities can't get any info because the local 911 call center is not set-up yet.

This company is marketing a service (covered in this NYT article (cached at the IHT)) that tracks phones on which it's java app has been installed. The service is being marketed to parents and employers and allows access to the location information via a website. They'll also send email alerts whenever a phone travels outside a predefined set of boundaries (a "geofence"). Pretty cool.

For the curious, it's all described on the uLocate FAQ.

Only works with Nextel now and free until the end of the year.

Another reason to hate Nextel for me. After having a boss that gave us all Nextels and having managers that would use the Instant-On feature to speak to us night and day (10:26pm Manager: "Hello, Hello, are you there?? The mail server seems to be a little slow, are you there?"), I will never consider Nextel again. I'm scarred for life!!

With a GPS receiver in many cell phones we need to figure out how we all can collaborate on creating maps. Here is a map I created with the data from my cell phone over the course of a couple of months. If everyone contributed instead of the data from a few people driving around we could pool the collective data and have great, open maps. This service is free until the end of the year, if everyone who can signed up and we pool the locations we would have a great map (not to mention traffic info.)

Through the end of the year you can use a personal locating system for free at uLocate.com They have feature like the ability to set a virtual fence around an area and get a text message or email if a phone goes in or out of the fence. You can see the location of all the phones in your account from any Java enabled phone

http://www.ulocate.com/

Please, don't let my wife know about this. Can you imagine?

"What were you doing at that strip-bar, AGAIN?"

My god! What are we in the process of doing to ourselves? Hmmm, then again, maybe I can sign her phone up for it and just keep it to myself.... Hmmm....

All jokes aside, I believe that the truth is, we are morally messy thinking meat. We are not supposed to know some things, for our own good. These types of technologies will someday threaten the very foundations of our society.

http://www.ulocate.com/