Location Sharing Applications -Privacy concerns? Or-Business vs. Fairness

My family used Google's Latitude app for location sharing.  We find it to be a very useful tool, and can use it as part of daily planning.  For example knowing when to start cooking dinner when we see where a family member is on the freeway coming home.  We also enjoy seeing where family members are located when they are on trips or vacations.
Then a few years ago, Google eliminated Latitude and moved everyone to Google + for family location sharing.   For several years, location sharing worked OK --although Google+ gradually made it more and more difficult to access using a computer browser.  It requires multiple steps to find the individual, find the profile, then get to the bottom of the profile where the location is hidden.  It seems that Google didn't want users to find that feature on Google+ Location sharing worked OK on android and iphones for a year or so.  Locations were relatively easy to navigate to, and the GUI seemed well designed.  With the latest update to Google+ on iphone the capability of pinpoint location sharing was eliminated for iphone users.  So now the family can only see my wife's iphone "city location" -no pinpoint location-- Family members with android can still share pinpoint.locations.  iPhone users are shown on the street at the major city-center intersection.    

The Google+ team has not told users if the disabling of pinpoint location sharing from iphone is permanent. Is it possible that the next version of Google+ for iphone will enable that feature again?   If it is permanent, maybe we all need to get the same brand of phones (all iphones or all android) --or all sign up for one of the pay subscription location tracking services.  But meanwhile, it seems to be a mysterious change.

Why is Google trying to gradually eliminate the location-sharing capability?  I could believe that they have concerns about privacy.  Some people feel it is "creepy" to let others track where they are.  I agree, we don't really want strangers (people outside of our Google+ circles) to know where we are at all times.  However when we voluntarily offer up our location tracking to our friends and family it seems different.  Users do have the capability of turning off the sharing --which was easy to do on Latitude, but is more difficult to do in Google+.  I can imagine that if I had a mistress, I probably would want to turn off my location tracking when visiting her to hide that fact from my wife?  But for most normal family functions, it seems natural and fun to share locations with our family and close friends.

Is it possible that Google and Apple do not want phone users to realize that they are being continually tracked by their advertising applications?  Are Google & Apple trying to shut down the capability of users being able to track people "for free" because they are trying to sell that information to businesses?  If so, they don't want to let them get it for free!  At any rate, it seems totally unfair for business (and Government probably) to be able to track the location of everyone all of the time, while they gradually elminate the capability for individuals to share our locations among our friends and family.  Yes, location sharing has value, but the cost to provide that service is very low with current technology.  I think the cost of providing that service is worth the "payment" by phone owners of sharing their location to businesses. That allows businesses to target advertising.   The idea that each family member must pay $5/month for location sharing services seems very expensive.