Happy Birthday, Google Maps! 🎉🗺️

Google Maps is turning 15 years old. Yes, 15! It’s amazing how much this technological “teenager” has learned and how much it does for us today.

Can anyone imagine going back to having a Filcar guide in the car? Many people born in the late ’90s or after 2000 probably don’t even know what that is. That guide could never tell us whether a store was open or closed, its phone number, website, photos, or customer reviews.

 Let alone show us the best route to get there… for that, a Filcar employee would have had to mark the route with a highlighter! 😄

If Filcar had contained all the information Google Maps offers today, it would have been so big and heavy we’d need to carry it in the trunk of the car — and it would probably only cover Buenos Aires city and suburbs, not the whole world.

New look, new features

To celebrate its anniversary, Google Maps refreshed its logo, but that’s not all. It also introduced several new features.

Until now, the app had three main tabs:

• Explore

• Commute

• For you

With the new update, users will see five tabs:

• Explore

• Commute

• Saved

• Contribute

• Updates

The most distinctive one is Updates, which lets users discover trending places and must-visit spots recommended by experts and local editors. You can also discover, save, and share recommendations with your network, and even chat directly with businesses.

Meanwhile, the Contribute tab makes it easier to share local knowledge, such as route details, missing places, reviews, and photos of businesses.

New features coming soon

Over the past year, Google Maps introduced a “crowd predictions” feature that helps estimate how crowded public transport might be based on past trips. Now, it will also include new route data based on user contributions, such as:

• Temperature

• Accessibility

• Safety on board

• Number of available train cars

Google also announced that in the coming months it will expand Live View, its augmented reality feature for walking directions, making it easier to quickly see how far away a place is and in which direction it’s located.

As mentioned, the Google Maps update with all these new features will start rolling out to iOS and Android users. If you don’t receive it right away, don’t worry — you will soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7DpMMYFVeA

Happy Birthday, Google Maps! 🚗📍

Ignacio Salas

Google Local Guide - Nivel 7