Ahhh Google Maps, you have become so much more than a map. Thanks to the help of Google’s crowd-source army of Local Guides, and before that Map Makers, and I’m sure their web crawling technology and occasionally accurate Map Bot, Google Maps has become an index of places, locations, phone numbers, opening hours, web addresses and especially images, oh and it has maps too!
In the latest update to Google Maps, Google seems to have shared its Google Photos image detection magic to sort through posted images for business and separate out images “from the menu”, or picture of food. As you would expect the results are accurate and they seem to be live in Australia now.
The update introduces a new row of pictures showing off images of food taken at the business as well as a link to add new food images. Or you can jump into the all images tab and get a breakdown of “All” or “From Menu” images in there. I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for Wood fired pizza.
Maps has also received integration with GMail and Calendar entries. For any appointments or email that include a specific geographic location, Google Maps will now show those events, in chronological order, in the Your Places tab. This seems to be an extension of the previous Gmail/ Inbox / Google Trip implementation that has been improving over the past few years.
It’s clear that Maps is one of Google’s headline products, and definitely somewhere they are continually investing in. As a once avid Google Mapper I can’t wait to see what features Google Maps gets next.
‘Occasionally accurate Map Bot’ – haha, yep. Revert and revert again.
that was just for the Map Makers out there, I knew they’d understand!