In a blog post, the company highlighted new features and changes to Maps that will be rolled out in the coming months.

The new version of Google Maps is said to incorporate AI to bring users more accurate search results. It will also display photo results based on images shared by other users. For example, searches for “animal lattes,” “find the best animal latte art,” or “take your dog to the pumpkin patch” will get the most direct priority results. Google says these results are based on billions of photos analyzed by the Google Maps community.

The new feature will launch this week in France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US, with more countries to follow.

Google is also expanding the Lens feature (formerly known as Live View Search), which helps users orient themselves based on their surroundings, utilizing AR and AI to show the correct path and assist users in finding the right direction. The feature will expand to more than 50 new cities later this week, including Austin, Las Vegas, Rome, Sao Paulo and Taipei.

In addition, Google has done a lot to prepare for in-car maps to better provide navigation for drivers.

A still image shows a phone screen with a highlighted route overview of Google Maps directions to the Natural History Museum. A small, white notification indicates where an HOV lane is available. indicates where an HOV lane is available along the route.

In short, Google will use a variety of colors to depict buildings and help drivers find their bearings. It also provides more detailed lane information, which helps drivers plan lane changes efficiently and safely, especially on the highway.

A still image showing Google Maps navigation on the in-car screen, with exit lanes detailed in blue as the car approaches the freeway exit.

In the U.S., Google has also added data related to HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes to help better plan routes.

Google will also be using AI to expand its support for speed limit information to help drivers maintain the correct speed. Both features will roll out to Android, iOS, and Google-enabled cars in the coming months.

Starting this week, electric cars equipped with Google’s built-in features will also be able to see information related to charging stations, including charging port compatibility, charging speed, and whether the station is occupied.

Google announced the rollout of Immersive View to Android and iOS in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, Florence, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Paris, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Tokyo and Venice.

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Leaked material shows that Google plans to sell access to a new API (application programming interface) that includes things like solar energy, energy information, and air quality.

Among a list of sample customers, Google’s new offering will include a solar API that can be used by solar installers such as SunRun and Tesla Energy, as well as solar design firms such as Aurora Solar. Google also sees opportunities to partner with real estate companies like Zillow and Redfin, hospitality companies like Marriott, and utilities like PG&E.

Some of the data for the Solar API will come from a consumer-facing pilot called Project Sunroof, a solar energy savings calculator that first launched in 2015. The program allows users to enter an address and get estimated solar costs, such as electricity savings and the size of the solar installation needed. It also provides 3D models of building roofs and nearby trees based on Google Maps data.

Google plans to sell API access to individual building data, as well as aggregated data for all buildings in a particular city or county. Google says it has data on more than 350 million buildings, far more than the 60 million buildings mentioned by Project Sunroof in 2017, according to the filing.

An internal document estimates that Google’s solar API will generate $90 million to $100 million (currently about 656 million to 729 million yuan) in revenue in its first year after launch. The document also mentions the possibility of future connections with Google Cloud products.

At the same time, Google also plans to release an air quality API that will allow customers to request location-specific air quality data, such as pollutants, and health-based recommendations. The API will also include digital heatmaps of the data, hourly air quality information, and up to 30 days of air quality history.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move by Google is an attempt to monetize its mapping product under pressure from a broader economic slowdown. While Google is committed to improving efficiency, it is also investing in new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and sustainability, which it hopes to use in the solar API project to develop markets.

Currently, Google licenses its navigation map API to companies such as Uber. Uber said in 2019 that it paid Google $58 million over three years. Revenue from the Maps API goes to Google’s cloud business, which finally turned profitable in the first quarter of this year but struggled to compete with market leaders Amazon and Microsoft.

Google doesn’t disclose revenue from its maps business, but according to Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak, Google Maps has been one of Google’s least profitable products. Morgan Stanley has estimated that with the addition of new travel products and promotional labels, Google Maps revenue will reach 11.1 billion US dollars (currently about 80.919 billion) this year.

Google’s plans to sell map data come as the company tries to streamline its map offering. In June of this year, the media discovered that Google was laying off employees of Waze, a free traffic navigation app, and merging it with the Google Maps team. Waze was acquired by Google in 2013.

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Google Maps has gone a step further by recently introducing a new immersive view feature for users, bringing an even more stunning and superior visual experience.

Google previewed the Immersive View feature last year, using artificial intelligence to blend billions of Street View and aerial images to create a digital model of the real world.

Google officially announced the Immersive View feature in a tweet, translated by IT House as follows:

Let's proudly introduce Immersive View, a new way to explore Google Maps.

Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, we can blend billions of street views and aerial images together, allowing you to visit destinations before you travel.

Immersive View is currently limited to London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. However, Google plans to expand it to more cities “in the coming months,” including Amsterdam, Dublin and Venice.

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Google said in a blog post, “You can now see the estimated time to your destination, distance to the next turn, and other information on the iPhone lock screen. This information was previously only available when you unlocked the phone, opened the app and enabled integrated navigation mode. If you choose another path, the lock screen screen will also automatically update the navigation path.

Google is also actively expanding the Live View feature, which says it uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality to help you pinpoint your current location and let you navigate indoors to your target location.

Google said it recently launched Live View in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo, and will begin expanding the feature to Barcelona, Dublin and Madrid in the next few months.

The Live Activities feature is simple to understand simplifying the steps users take to access information and simplifying operations. Lock screen notifications are no longer displayed one by one, but in a scrolling rotation at the bottom, and can also be set to show only the number of notifications, so as not to affect the view of the lock screen wallpaper.

With the new Live Activities API, you can set up notifications to display custom content, and automatic updates, such as dynamic viewing of game scores, taxi trips, etc., as well as control music playback, full-screen display of album images, etc.

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Many users have noticed a “Search GPS” issue with Google Maps on Android Auto, which involves multiple car models, smartphone models and Android Auto versions.

However, this issue does not occur when using Google Maps apps other than Android Auto. And, beyond that, there are ways to mitigate it. Users report that the issue only occurs when the phone is put to sleep and the screen is turned off.

Some users have solved the problem by changing the Google Maps permissions on their Android devices to ensure that the app’s location permissions are set to “always allow. Others have mitigated the problem by turning off Optimize Battery Usage.

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There are not many smartwatches that support WearOS, mainly Samsung brands, including Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro.

Launch Mode is a new menu added to the Google Maps Wear OS app, located between the Auto-launch and Terms of service menus.

Under the Launch Mode menu, you will see two options under the Navigation heading and will need to select the Watch only option so that you can start navigation directly from the app on your watch. These options will appear on Bluetooth/Wi-Fi and LTE-enabled watches.

The post Some WearOS handsets can navigate Google Maps on their own appeared first on TechGoing.

Image source Pexels

Porsche Chief Financial Officer Lutz Meschke previously said the company is in close contact with Google and Apple, as well as China’s Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, after ending a software development partnership with Volkswagen’s Cariad unit.

Porsche had previously been reluctant to use Google’s software because it required too much data to be shared, even though Volkswagen brand Audi allowed its customers to connect their vehicles to Android phones, according to Manager Magazin.

Porsche executives traveled to the United States in late 2021 to discuss a possible partnership with iPhone maker Apple, whose CarPlay software is already used in Porsche cars.

Porsche, which surpassed its former parent company Volkswagen as Europe’s most valuable automaker after listing on the stock exchange last September, reported yesterday that car deliveries will grow by 3 percent in 2022.

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Google plans to merge its 500-strong Waze team with the company’s Geo division, which is responsible for Google Maps, Google Earth and Street View products, starting Friday, according to a Google spokesperson.

Waze CEO Neha Parikh will leave after a transition period. A Google spokesman said the company plans to keep Waze as a standalone service and does not plan to make any layoffs as part of the restructuring.

Google said it expects the restructuring to reduce overlap between the Waze and Maps product teams. In a statement, a Google spokesperson said, “Google remains committed to building Waze’s unique brand, continuing to persist in improving the beloved app, and supporting a thriving community of volunteers and users.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is always looking for ways to improve efficiency after advertising growth has slowed this year. In September, Pichai said he wanted Google to be 20 percent more efficient and suggested the company might merge teams developing overlapping products.

Google’s major shareholder, activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management, called on Alphabet last month to make big cost cuts, writing in a letter to management that it believes Google has too many employees.

In 2013, Google bought Waze for $1.1 billion, the fourth-largest deal the company made at the time. The acquisition drew scrutiny from regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which ultimately decided not to challenge the deal.

Waze’s crowdsourced mapping service, which has 151 million active monthly users, is known for maintaining detailed traffic data. In recent years, Waze has also worked to build up its advertising business.

After the acquisition, Waze operated largely independently of the Google Maps division, although Google integrated many of Waze’s popular features into its flagship product.

In 2021, Noam Bardin, the CEO who decided to sell Waze to Google, left the company to start Post, a Twitter competitor, and Bardin later wrote a blog post describing the challenges he faced after joining Google, including dissatisfaction with the company’s hiring practices and internal bureaucracy.

In the blog post, Balding wrote, “Even after being acquired by Google, all of Waze’s growth has come from our own work, not the support of our parent company. Looking back, we probably would have grown faster and been more efficient if we had stayed independent.”

Former music technology executive Christopher Phillips, who led the Geo division, will now also oversee Waze. the service’s staff previously reported to Don Harrison, Google’s president of global partnerships and corporate development.

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Google Maps is also available for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay and is a trusted navigation tool for many car owners. Its voice search feature is also very simple, just say where you want to go and select the destination on the screen to provide you with the best route to navigate.

On the foreign community Reddit, a number of users have reported that the Google Maps for CarPlay voice search feature has a bizarre glitch, which is apparently not an isolated incident. From time to time, users encounter problems when they open their cars and use Google Maps’ voice search feature for the first time. The main problem is that pressing the microphone shows no activation and sometimes users need to press it more than once to get it to work properly.

According to the feedback from users also did not find a certain pattern, while it is not clear what causes this problem. Some users have never encountered this problem, while others have frequently experienced it. There is also feedback from users that this problem once disappeared but recently reappeared.

There seems to be no fix for this problem, and Google has not yet acknowledged the error. The only solution is to click on the microphone button for voice search and wait 1-2 minutes before clicking again, basically restoring the response.

The post The Google Maps for CarPlay voice search feature has a random glitch appeared first on TechGoing.

Users can click the camera icon in the Google Maps search bar to enable the feature, and once enabled, users can see a lot of surrounding information, including stores, banks, ATMs, bars and more.

This feature in Google Maps also provides AR-based path navigation with clearer arrows to guide users to their nearest destinations. On the screen will also display some key information about these places, such as whether the bar is currently open, how much the per capita spending of restaurants, and the evaluation of these places by users, etc.

Google says users can click on a venue category to see what restaurants, bars, sweet stores, parks and transport stops are within walking distance, and this feature of Google Maps went into preview in September this year, and Google is now ready to roll it out to the public. Google will start rolling out the feature in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo next week.

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