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GET DRIVING DIRECTIONS
Google Maps is a desktop web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions (Google Traffic), and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle (in beta), or public transportation.
Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program designed by Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a realtime traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005. The service’s front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax. Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites, and offers a locator for urban businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allows users to collaboratively expand and update the service’s mapping worldwide.
Google Maps’ satellite view is a “top-down” or “birds eye” view; most of the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 to 1,500 feet (240 to 460 m), while most other imagery is from satellites. Much of the available satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is updated on a regular basis. Google Maps uses a close variant of the Mercator projection, and therefore cannot accurately show areas around the poles.
The current redesigned version of the desktop application was made available in 2013, alongside the “classic” (pre-2013) version. Google Maps for mobile was released in September 2008 and features GPS turn-by-turn navigation. In August 2013, it was determined to be the world’s most popular app for smartphones, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it at least once.
In 2012, Google reported having over 7,100 employees and contractors directly working in mapping.
Google Maps provides a route planner under “Get Directions”. Up to four modes of transportation are available depending on the area: driving, public transit (see the Google Transit section below), walking, and bicycling. In combination with Google Street View, issues such as parking, turning lanes, and one-way streets can be viewed before traveling. Driving directions are covered as follows:
- Most countries of mainland Eurasia and Africa are covered contiguously, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Canary Islands, Cyprus, Malta, Sri Lanka, most of Indonesia and Timor-Leste. China mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Jordan, Lebanon and North Korea have directions available without connection to other states. Only public transit directions are provided for South Korea.
- All countries of mainland North and Central America are covered contiguously.
- All countries of mainland South America are covered. All countries including Trinidad and Tobago* (*although considered to be part of North America) are treated contiguously.
- All inhabited countries and territories in the Caribbean are covered, though in general there are no connections between islands.
- Additionally, American Samoa, Australia, the Azores, Cape Verde, The Comoros, The Cook Islands, the Faroe Islands, The Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Hawaii, Iceland, Japan, Madagascar, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, the Philippines, Réunion, São Tomé and Príncipe, the Seychelles, Samoa, Taiwan, Tonga, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna are covered as stand-alone regions, as are Nuuk in Greenland, Sabah in Malaysia, parts of Papua New Guinea, parts of Solomon Islands and Socotra in Yemen.
Extensibility and customization
As Google Maps is coded almost entirely in JavaScript and XML, some end users have reverse-engineered the tool and produced client-side scripts and server-side hooks which allowed a user or website to introduce expanded or customized features into the Google Maps interface.
Using the core engine and the map/satellite images hosted by Google, such tools can introduce custom location icons, location coordinates and metadata, and even custom map image sources into the Google Maps interface. The script-insertion tool Greasemonkey provides a large number of client-side scripts to customize Google Maps data.
Google Maps API
In October 2005, Google introduced a Java application called Google Maps for Mobile, intended to run on any Java-based phone or mobile device. Many of the web-based site’s features are provided in the application.
On November 4, 2009, Google Maps Navigation was released in conjunction with Google Android OS 2.0 Eclair on the Motorola Droid, adding voice commands, traffic reports, and street view support. The initial release was limited to the United States. The service was launched in the UK on 20 April 2010 and in large parts of continental western Europe on June 9, 2010.
In March 2011 Google Vice President of Location Service, Marissa Mayer, said that Google provided map services to 150 million users.
In June 2012, Apple announced that they would replace Google Maps with their own maps service from iOS 6. However, on December 13, 2012, Google announced the availability of Google Maps in the Apple App Store, starting with the iPhone version. Just hours after the Google Maps iOS app was released, it became the top free app in the App Store.
It was announced on December 6, 2012 that Google Maps would make its way to the Wii U, Nintendo’s eighth generation video game home console. Accessibility to a variant of Google Street View on the Wii U was released in February 14, 2013 as an initially free downloadable app available via the Nintendo eShop. As of October 31, 2013, the app is no longer available for free.
Acquisitions
Google Maps first started as a C++ program designed by two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, at the Sydney-based company Where 2 Technologies. It was first designed to be separately downloaded by users, but the company later pitched the idea for a purely Web-based product to Google management, changing the method of distribution. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google Inc where it transformed into the web application Google Maps. In the same month, Google acquired Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization company, (with controversial investment from the CIA), whose marquee application suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as the highly successful Google Earth application in 2005 while other aspects of its core technology were integrated into Google Maps. In September 2004 Google acquired ZipDash, a company that provided realtime traffic analysis.
