The new Google Maps interface is not yet available, but you can try an application that has a lot of things in common with the new Google Maps. It's called Maps Engine Lite and it will probably replace the My Maps feature.


Full-screen map, interface elements overlaid on top of the map, the same search box and zoom buttons. It's consistent with the new Google Maps interface.

"We're launching Google Maps Engine Lite (Beta), so any mapping enthusiast can now create and share robust custom maps using this powerful, easy-to-use tool. You can import small spreadsheets of locations onto a comprehensive map, visualize those places through a variety of styling and drawing options, and organize and compare up to three different data sets for your non-business purposes," informed Google back in March.

Here's a diagram from a Google Maps support page that shows the current interface:


And here's a similar diagram for the new Google Maps:


The new interface is a lot cleaner and there are fewer features, but it's not clear how many features are missing.

When you search for an address using Google, you'll usually see a Google Maps result with a static map and links for directions. If your address is very specific and includes a street number, Google will also show a Street View thumbnail that lets you quickly access Google's panoramic street-level imagery.

For example, a search for [1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View] shows the Street View image, but a search for [Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View] doesn't. Sometimes you need to include the zip code: [1 infinite loop cupertino ca 95014] works, but [1 infinite loop cupertino ca] doesn't.


{ Thanks, Jérôme. }

Google is about to launch a new interface for Google Maps. The update will remove the sidebar and will display everything on top of the full-screen map. One of the new features lets you restrict local search results to places recommended by top reviews or your Google+ circles.



It's a more immersive interface that will probably work well on mobile devices. Instead of focusing on navigational elements, buttons and sidebars, the new Google Maps focuses on the map. Google has also updated map colors, icons, text styles.

When will we see the new UI? It's not clear, but Google I/O is next week.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

The latest version of Google Maps for iOS added a small feature that's really useful: manually changing distance units. Just tap the "people" icon next to the search box, tap the "wheel" icon, go to the "distance units" section and select "miles" or "kilometres".


Until now, the application used the unit that corresponded to the country you've selected in the iPhone's settings (General/International/Regional format). If you've picked "United States", Google Maps only displayed distance information in miles.

Unfortunately, the "regional format" setting affects a lot of features, including the Google URL used by Safari's search box. If you select any other country than the United States, you're always sent to the corresponding international domain.

Google Maps 1.1 for iOS also integrates with Google Contacts and adds a feature that lets you "quickly search for local places by selecting popular categories such as restaurants, bars, cafes, gas stations". Right now, the most important missing feature is the lack of native iPad support.

Apple stopped using Google's maps service in iOS6 and switched to other providers. The new application added cool features like turn-by-turn navigation and vector maps, but the coverage isn't that great. There are many countries with incomplete databases of streets and points of interests, a lot of mistakes, poor geocoding accuracy, outdated maps and empty spots. Even Apple admitted that the app is not good enough.

After a few months of waiting, Google finally released a native maps app for iPhone. It requires iOS 5.1 and it's not optimized for iPad yet. The application has all the features of the old maps app and many new features: integration with Google Accounts, vector maps with 3D views, turn-by-turn navigation, Google+ Places integration, search suggestions and online search history. It doesn't have all the features from the Android app, but it's only the first version.

The interface is completely new and you need some time to get used to the new gestures. Google opted for a non-standard interface with few buttons and native controls so that you can see more of the map. "The app shows more map on screen and turns mobile mapping into one intuitive experience. It’s a sharper looking, vector-based map that loads quickly and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views," explains Google.





Google also released a SDK for iOS apps. "With the Google Maps SDK for iOS, developers can feature Google Maps in their applications on the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. Also, the SDK makes it simple to link to Google Maps for iPhone from inside your app, enabling your users to easily search and get directions."

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Google Maps app for iOS is almost ready for launch. "Google has been putting the finishing touches on the app before submitting it for approval to the Apple iTunes store, though it's unclear exactly when that will happen."

The new app will include all the feature from Apple's old maps app, but also turn-by-turn navigation. It's likely that Google wants to build a better app than the built-in iOS 6 maps app, so it must include turn-by-turn directions and flyover maps.

Even if Google submits the app for approval in the coming weeks, it's not obvious that you'll be able download it so soon because Apple could reject the app or delay its approval. The new version of the Google Search app for iOS was announced 3 months ago, but it was approved two weeks ago.

For now, you can use the Google Maps web app, which has recently added support for Street View. There's also the great Nokia Maps web app.

Google Maps no longer recommends to swim across the Atlantic Ocean if you want to go from the United States to Europe. Google found a better way: "sail across the Pacific Ocean".


Google's directions from New York to Paris are quite straightforward: go to Seattle, then swim across Pacific to Hawaii, swim again to Asia where you are directed to drive through Asia and Europe to reach France. After only 519 hours you're supposed to reach the destination.

{ Thanks, Anon. }

Sometimes web apps are better than native apps because they can be constantly updated and users always have the latest version. Google still hasn't released a native Google Maps app for iOS, but it has improved the mobile web app by adding support for street view. Now the Google Maps web app has all the features from Apple's old maps, even if the performance is inferior.

"With access to Street View on your phone, you can use panoramic, street-level imagery to explore and navigate the places around you, even on the go," informs Google. Obviously, Street View for mobile browsers uses SVG and HTML5, not Flash.



If you've updated an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to iOS 6, open maps.google.com in Safari, tap the arrow icon and then "add to home screen". Now you can open Google Maps from the home screen, search for local business, get directions, switch to the satellite view or open your personalized maps. Google has constantly improved the maps service in the past 7 years, so Apple has a lot to catch up.

The Google Maps web app is not new, but it will be used a lot more, now that Google Maps links no longer send users to the built-in maps app and open in the browser.

Now that Apple's iOS 6 has a maps app that no longer uses Google Maps, many people wonder if Google will release its own app. After all, the built-in maps app has been developed by Apple and it didn't include many Google Maps features. Maybe Google wanted to keep features like navigation Android-only, maybe Apple focused on the new app and ignored the old app. One thing is clear: the Android app for Google Maps was a lot better than Apple's app.

The Next Web reports that Jeff Huber, Senior VP at Google, said that Google "looks forward to providing amazing Google Maps experiences on iOS." Google will compete with the built-in maps app so it will have to include features that used to be limited to Android like vectorial maps, offline maps, navigation, integration with Google Places and new features like the "fly-over" maps. Google says that it will add "3D models to entire metropolitan areas to Google Earth on mobile devices," but an app that combines Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Local would be more useful. Upgrading the Google Earth app is much easier than building a new app and the existing users won't have to install another application. Google Earth is the second most popular Google app for iOS, after Google Search.

The next version of Apple's iOS includes a new maps app that's no longer powered by Google Maps. Apple now uses data from TomTom, OpenStreetMap, Yelp to provide a more comprehensive experience that rivals the Android app for Google Maps. Apple Maps offers turn-by-turn directions, Siri integration, local business reviews from Yelp, "flyover" 3D maps.

Flyover lets you "see major metro areas from the air with photo-realistic, interactive 3D views" and it's a clever combination of Google Earth and Street View. Last year, Apple acquired C3 Technologies and used its technology for the 3D maps.


Obviously, Apple's new maps app no longer includes Street View, Google Transit, Google's comprehensive maps and local search and many users will miss these features. Google will lose a significant amount of mobile traffic and an important data source for Google Maps, but it will be able to release a much better Google Maps app, assuming that Apple approves it. After all, Google Maps is one of the best apps for Android and Google has constantly added new features, while Apple's maps app hasn't improved too much.

Google Maps has a great new feature that shows 3D photo tours for more than 15,000 landmarks using the images submitted by Panoramio and Picasa Web users. Google displays an image preview next to the local search results that have photo tours, so it's easy to find them. Here are some examples: La Sagrada Familia, La Tour Eiffel, Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, Hungarian State Opera House, Trevi Fountain. The feature uses WebGL, so it only works in Chrome, Firefox and Safari (where it's disabled by default).


"To produce these photo tours, we use advanced computer vision techniques to create a 3D experience from public, user-contributed Picasa and Panaromio photos. We start by finding clusters of overlapping photos around major landmarks. From the photos, our system derives the 3D shape of each landmark and computes the location and orientation of each photo. Google Maps then selects a path through the best images, and adds 3D transitions to seamlessly guide you from photo to photo as if you're literally flying around the landmark and viewing it from different perspectives," explains Google.

Nikolaas, a reader of this blog, noticed that Pegman - the Google Street View icon - looks different for Belgium. When you try to move the icon, you'll notice that Pegman got some French fries.


"Occasionally Pegman dresses up for special events and occasions, or is even joined by peg friends in Google Maps. Some of these icons stay in Google Maps for specific locations, such as the skiing Pegman at Whistler Blackcomb Mountain and the penguin for Street View imagery of Half Moon Island, Antarctica," explains Google.

Street View was launched two months ago in Belgium, but it's not clear why Pegman looks different. Maybe because French fries originate from Belgium.

{ Thanks, Nikolaas. }

Rodney G., a reader of this blog noticed a new feature in Google Maps. "When you search for a city or a county or a ZIP Code, Google Maps now highlights the boundaries of what you searched for. If you are zoomed out, the whole area is shaded pink. If you zoom in a bit, it has just a big pink border with grey shading. Zoom in even more and it's a dashed boundary with grey shading."




It's a really useful feature and the nice thing is that's enabled by default. Just search for a country, a city, a state or a ZIP code and Google Maps will automatically highlight it.

{ Thanks, Rodney. }

If you like the Google Maps app for Android and you wonder why it looks better than the desktop Google Maps, there's a new experimental interface that uses WebGL and it's available in Chrome 14+ and Firefox 8+. If you click "Want to try something new?" in the Google Maps sidebar and enable MapGL, you'll see a completely new Google Maps interface that shows 3D buildings and no longer uses Flash for Street View.


"We've rebuilt Google Maps from the ground up. Our enhanced Maps provide improved performance, richer 3D graphics, smoother transitions between imagery, 45° view rotation, easier access to Street View and more," explains Google.




Google says that the new interface requires Chrome 14 or Firefox 8 (beta), Windows Vista/7 or Mac OS 10.6+ or Linux and a graphics card that supports WebGL. I've tested in Chrome 14 and it works well: the animations are smooth and Google Maps looks more like a native app.

Google Maps replaced the static icons for the satellite and street maps layers with interactive previews of the layers. I'm not sure if they're useful, but they look a lot better than the icons.

Corey, a reader of this blog, found a better way to describe the new feature: "When you're looking at a map in normal view, the satellite view button shows what the satellite view looks like on the little square where the button is and acts like a window to satellite view like you're looking through the regular map and it follows the map as it moves. I thought that was pretty cool."



{ Thanks, Corey. }

Google Maps has a new layer that "switches between the labels in the local language and transliterated text". It's enabled by default, but you can disable it by mousing over the layer box and unchecking "English". Until now, both versions were displayed and the map looked cluttered.

After a brief disappearance, short URLs are back in Google Maps. This was one of the most popular experiment from Google Maps Labs and it's now a standard feature. Just click the link button next to the search box and click the "short URL" checkbox. The new short URLs use g.co, a domain recently acquired by Google. All the URLs that start with "http://g.co" send you to Google domains, while http://goo.gl/ continues to be a public URL shortener.


Google Maps is the service that generates very long URLs with many unnecessary parameters, so the short URLs are useful not just for posting a Twitter message or sending a text message, but also for writing an email, a comment on a blog post or for adding a Google Maps URL to a document. Google Maps also needs to automatically change the URL from the address bar, so that you don't have to use the permalink button.

{ via Google LatLong }

Google Maps added a layer for weather. Just mouse over the satellite box and select "weather" from the list of layers.

"When zoomed out, you'll see a map with current weather conditions from U.S. Naval Research Lab. And, if you look closely, you can also tell if it's day or night around the world by sun and moon icons. Enabling the weather layer also gives you an instant weather report for friends and family living around the world," informs Google. Weather reports are powered by weather.com and include information about the current conditions (humidity, wind speed, temperature) and a 4-day forecast.



The nice thing about Google Maps layers is that you can combine them. For example, you can enable both the terrain and the weather layers, like you can see in the screenshot above.

Google Places pages have been updated to use the new Google+ interface, but the biggest change is that Google dropped the reviews from third-party sites like Yelp, Menupages or Booking.com, while only relying on the reviews from Google users. "Based on careful thought about the future direction of Place pages, and feedback we've heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from Place pages. Rating and review counts reflect only those that've been written by fellow Google users, and as part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we're continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive view of locations across the globe," explains Google.

To encourage users to share their feedback and improve place pages, Google added a button for uploading photos and made the button for writing reviews more prominent. It's clear that Google Maps will become even more social and will integrate with Google+, so the reviews from your social circles will be more relevant and will help you find a nice restaurant or a fancy hotel.


While Google Hotpot added a lot of new reviews from Google users, there are still many local business that don't have reviews. What's more, the reviews from Google users are usually short, superficial and often they only include a rating.


Search Engine Roundtable speculates that Google removed third-party reviews because of Yelp's complaints. "We are unhappy with the way Google uses our users' review on its Places page. However, there is no solution to the problem… Google's position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don't want them to use our reviews on Places," said Yelp's CEO. After an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Yelp, Google launched Places, Hotpot and made Google Maps results more prominent in the list of Web search results. Yelp felt that its reviews improved a competing service and asked Google to remove Yelp reviews from Google Places. Google decided that it's a good idea to blackmail Yelp and tie the Web search index with the Places reviews (Google News has a different policy and the same goes for Product Search). A such a terrible practice made Google look like a huge company that used its power to crush rising startups.

TechCrunch found that "Yelp made a presentation to a roomful of state attorneys general at the Conference of Western Attorneys General about regulatory issues in search. On that panel was Vince Sollitto, VP of Giverment Affairs for Yelp, along with Dana Wagner, a Google lawyer, and well-known antitrust attorney Gary Reback. Yelp's presentation was titled 'Google Places: A Threat To Innovation and Competition.' The basic argument was that Google strong-armed review websites into providing their content for free, and then gave their own Places product preferential treatment in search."

Instead of removing the reviews from Yelp, Google yanked all third-party reviews and made Google Places less useful. There are still links to other review sites and there's still a small excerpt from a review in the list of search results, but Google Maps is no longer a comprehensive source of reviews, while Bing Maps looks more attractive. Google Maps ratings no longer use data from third-party reviews, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that Google still uses these reviews to rank results.

The Google Maps app is a good reason to buy an Android phone. No other Google Maps version offers 3D maps, free turn-by-turn navigation, voice-guided navigation for walking directions or offline caching. No other Google Maps app is updated so frequently with cool features.

For instance, Google Maps 5.7 for Android combined Google Maps Navigation with transit directions and introduced an innovative feature called Transit Navigation. "Now, GPS turn-by-turn (or in this case, stop-by-stop) navigation is available for public transit directions in 400+ cities around the globe with Transit Navigation. Transit Navigation uses GPS to determine your current location along your route and alerts you when it's time to get off or make a transfer. This is particularly helpful if you're in a city where you don't speak the language and can't read the route maps or understand the announcements."

It's a really useful feature and the coverage is continually expanding. I suspect that Google Maps will find other clever ways to use notifications: location-based reminders, recommendation alerts ("notify me when I'm near an Italian restaurant"), social alerts ("notify me when I'm near a restaurant recommended by my friends").


Google Maps for Android also added a navigation icon next to the driving and walking directions, a photo viewer for Google Places pages and icons that categorize search suggestions.

Probably the most useful new feature is buried inside Google Maps Labs: on-demand maps caching. Tap the "menu" button, select "More" and then "Labs". Enable "download map area", long press on the map around the area you want save, tap on the bubble and select "Download map area". Google Maps will download the map area within 10 miles (16.09 kilometers) of the selected location and outline it. This feature only saves map tiles, so you won't be able to see satellite imagery, Street View images or get driving directions while offline.

The 10 miles limit can't be changed, but at least you can manage your downloaded maps. Use the "Cache settings" option from the menu and select "Downloaded map areas". You can rename map areas, delete them and quickly visualize them.