Algorithms are drawing buildings on the future of Google Maps. AR helps you decide what to eat. Meanwhile, Google Maps technology is existing more broadly outside of the actual Google Maps application. That is, according to Sundar Pichai. Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Alphabet. Alphabet is Google’s parent company. On Wednesday, Pichai said in an interview with WIRED that Maps, in particular, has always been a fertile testing ground for the “AI-first” approach. He also said that he started to push for it when he became CEO of Google in 2015.
Simultaneously with Pichai’s statement, Google Maps was celebrating its 15th birthday. On February 8, 2005, the service launched. Google realizes a global update to the Maps application to coincide with the anniversary. It is not a dramatic redesign; nevertheless, it moves some of the more hidden features of the app. For example, include the Updates tab and Contributions tab, into the main page of Maps. Thus, it makes one of the application’s newer augmented-reality features more readily available.
Google is enduring intense scrutiny from regulators over its digital advertising business. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the United States Justice Department is studying the market dominance of the company’s DoubleClick platform. Maps are one of the Google products that do serve to advertise; nevertheless, it is not a significant source of revenue for the company.
There are ongoing investigations. When asked about the current research, Pichai answered said the company is planning to engage in conversations on these matters constructively.
Pichai Talking about the Redesigned Google Maps
Pichai says that they provide platforms, and they provide them in many different contexts. He recently took on an expanded role as CEO of all of Alphabet. He said that before: he thinks with scale, it is making sense that things are looked at. Their goal is to show what they are doing. Pichai believes that they are going to great lengths for making sure the DoubleClick platform is done in a way in with the majority revenues through those platforms go to publishers. To that extent, there’s feedback on something that needs to do very differently, and they have already shown they will incorporate that.
Maps will change its design. The plan intends to showcase the company’s more ambitious map functions, according to Dane Glasgow, and VP of product at Google Maps. The Maps users have evolving needs, and the new design comes in the response of it. Maps were mostly a digital representation of an atlas in its earliest days. The perfect storm of Steer View technology, user-generated data, and GPS-enabled smartphones helped the platform to evolve rapidly. It is gaining more and more features, that bloat got stuffed behind a hamburger menu in the top corner.
The new design is to simplify things. The icon of application is getting overhauled: It is now a Googly-colored pin, instead of a mini-map. The latest redesign of the app is showing five new tabs: Updates (for the latest buzz about nearby goings-on), Contribute, Saved Places, Commute, and Explore.
