Google Unveils A Suite Of New Features For Google Maps

Google announced on Tuesday that it is adding over 100 AI-powered improvements to Google Maps throughout the coming year.

One of the biggest announcements is that Google is bringing its Live View augmented reality directions to airports, transit stations, and malls. Live View directions let you hold your phone up, point your camera at the world around you, and see arrows and icons pointing you where you need to go, and previously, they only worked outdoors.

The feature is more interactive than Google Maps' existing indoor maps and expands on a similar feature for city-street navigation that launched in 2019. It's available for Android and iOS users at some malls in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Long Island, Seattle, and Newark, New Jersey. Google said it will be available for use at a limited number of airports, malls, and transit stations in Tokyo and Zurich in the coming months.

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In addition to the directions interface, Google is adding a new type of driving route that’s optimized for lower fuel consumption. If the eco-friendly route has about the same ETA as the fastest route to a location, Google Maps will default to the fuel-efficient route, though you can change this in settings if you’d like. Google plans to make these new fuel-efficient routes available on Android and iOS in the US later this year and globally at an unspecified time in the future.

The fuel-efficient routes aren’t the only eco-friendly updates for Maps: Google also plans to introduce alerts that will tell you when you’ll be navigating through low-emissions zones, which don’t allow some vehicles with certain levels of emissions to enter. Google says these alerts will launch in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK on Android and iOS this June. More countries will get the alerts soon, according to Google.

Google is also making new map layers showing weather and air quality. The layers are set to roll out in the coming months on Android and iOS. Google plans to launch the weather layer globally and launch the air quality layer first in Australia, India, and the US.

Weather and air pollution will be available on Android and iOS, with a rollout set to occur in “the coming months."

The company also said it's conducting a pilot program with Kroger-owned supermarket Fred Meyer to integrate its existing curbside grocery pickup with Google Maps. For instance, the app could continuously update the store about your estimated arrival time and let you check-in through the app when you arrive. The pilot will run this summer in some stores in Portland, Oregon.

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Another tantalizing news — which in typical Google fashion doesn’t have an ETA just yet — is that Google plans to bring a vastly improved 3D layer to Google maps. 

Using photogrammetry, the same technology that also allows Microsoft’s Flight Simulator to render large swaths of the world in detail, Google is also building a model of the world for its Maps service.

“We’re going to continue to improve that technology that helps us fuse together the billions of aerials, StreetView and satellite images that we have to really help us move from that flat 2D map to a more accurate 3D model than we’ve ever had. And be able to do that more quickly. And to bring more detail to it than we’ve ever been able to do before,” Dane Glasgow, Google’s VP for Geo Product Experience, said in a press event ahead of today’s announcement. He noted that this 3D layer will allow the company to visualize all its data in new and interesting ways.