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Maps Minutes Hack #9: Get home quickly and safely on New Year’s Eve
December 29, 2015
Part of our
series
on how to save time this holiday season with Google Maps.
Whether you’re heading to a friend’s house for a cozy gathering, going to watch the ball drop in Times Square or attending an extravagant masquerade ball, the last thing you want to worry about on New Year’s Eve is driving.
With the Google Maps app, you can get where you’re going without ever getting behind the wheel. Earlier this year we launched a
new feature
that allows you to see various transportation options and compare travel times–all on one screen.
Once you enter your destination in the Google Maps app, you’ll see four options to get there: driving, walking, biking or transit (bus/train). You can quickly compare ETAs and switch between the transportation modes for more details and up-to-date information for each option.
If you’re heading to a casual celebration not so far from home, walking or public transit might be your best option. The Google Maps app will give your walk time ETA along with a few transit route options with real-time schedules, updates and fares.
Google Maps can also help you grab an Uber, if arriving by bus or train isn’t your holiday style. You can see the estimated trip duration, pickup time and estimated cost once you scroll down to the bottom of the app's transit option screen.
Stay safe with Maps Minutes Hacks and enjoy your New Year’s celebrations wherever they take you.
Posted by Dai Pham, Head of Geo and Google Maps Marketing
Maps Minutes Hack #8: Set your home and work addresses for easy navigation
December 23, 2015
Part of our
series
on how to save time this holiday season with Google Maps.
It’s crunch time. There are holiday parties to attend and last-minute gifts to be bought and wrapped. When the holidays are only days away even the small things can make a difference. So here’s another helpful trick for how you can save a few extra minutes every time you use Google Maps for directions or navigation.
You can save your home and work addresses in Google Maps, and then select “home” or “work” rather than typing the locations every single time. Just go to “your places” on the side menu and you’ll see “home” and “work” under “labeled places”. Enter the address for each and next time you’re navigating to or from home or work, you can get your directions a little quicker and easier than before.
Every minute matters. Save more every day with Maps Minutes Hacks. Next up: how to get home fast and safe on New Year’s Eve.
Posted by Olga Suvorova, Product Marketing Manager, Google Maps
Live Road Traffic Launches in 3 New Countries
September 20, 2012
Today, Google Maps is expanding its offering of live road traffic in three new cities:
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
;
Kuwait City, Kuwait
and
Guayaquil, Ecuador
. Now, the maps of these locations are much more useful, as drivers can quickly determine the clearest route to their destinations and reduce the amount of time spent in the car. In addition to being able to see current traffic conditions, estimated travel times are also available to ease anxiety and help you plan your trips accordingly.
See road traffic in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
and
Guayaquil, Ecuador
We’ve also improved the live traffic information to include more roads and highways in 15 regions where this popular feature of Google Maps is already available: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.
We hope this more comprehensive coverage provides a more accurate picture of the traffic conditions in these areas, and helps people to not only avoid getting stuck in traffic jams, but also more easily get where they want to go.
A quick glance at our live traffic coverage around the globe
For new users, simply check traffic conditions by visiting
maps.google.com
and clicking on the traffic layer in the widget on the upper right-hand side of the map. This useful traffic information is also available on
Google Maps for Mobile devices
and
Google Maps Navigation
.
Get traffic information on Google Maps for Android (Shown:
Kuwait City, Kuwait
)
And if the roads you’re traveling do not yet show traffic conditions, you can help! Simply opt in to using
Google Navigation or Google Maps for Mobile while traveling
to help your fellow drivers get improved traffic information.
Posted by Stephan Seyboth, Product Manager
Making exploration easier for people around the world with Google Maps
September 5, 2012
Maps keep our spirit of adventure alive by making it easier for us to explore the world around us. That’s why today, we’re making Google Maps even better with new turn-by-turn navigation with traffic conditions, biking directions, Map Maker and new Street View imagery in more locations globally. These improvements are part of our ongoing effort to build the best map we can -- one that’s comprehensive, accurate and easy for you to use.
First, we’re expanding
Google Maps Navigation (Beta)
with voice guided, turn-by-turn directions in thousands of towns across
India
. Navigation is one of the most frequently requested features in this region and can be especially helpful when driving in densely populated cities like Delhi or Bangalore. We’re also adding
live traffic conditions
for major roads with estimated travel times to help you save time and to reduce stress on the road.
Turn-by-turn voice navigation in New Delhi, India
Biking directions
and
Map Maker
are also now rolling out to
New Zealanders
. Local cyclists can access biking directions directly on Google Maps, and use Map Maker to add bike lanes and trails if their favorite route is missing or they discover a new one. Beyond biking trails, Map Maker can also be used to make the New Zealand map more accurate with details such as new road names, building footprints and more.
Biking directions from Remuera in Auckland to the local Google office
Later today, we’ll also release new Street View imagery for more than 150 university campuses globally. With classes just getting started, freshman students, transfers and even empty-nesting parents can now familiarize themselves with college campuses around the world, including UCLA in the U.S., Pembroke College in the U.K., McGill University in Canada and Sophia University in Japan. These new panoramic views join our
growing list of universities
whose campuses are already available in Google Maps.
View Larger Map
Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles
Finally, to celebrate all the places you can reach with Google Maps—all seven continents, the sky, the moon and even the depths of the ocean—we made a video that we hope will inspire you to keep exploring.
Keep exploring at
maps.google.com/helloworld
. Here’s to many new adventures.
Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth
Google Maps Roundup: From Canada to Latin America to Europe, August was a busy month!
August 31, 2012
We’re always working to make Google Maps even more comprehensive, accurate and useful. This month, we’ve crisscrossed the globe gathering more imagery, expanding features and growing our Map Maker community. In case you missed it, here are a few Google Maps highlights from August:
Explore amazing places with new Street View imagery
We recently released Street View imagery for more places around the world, making Google Maps even more comprehensive, including:
6,000 panoramic views in and around NASA’s
Kennedy Space Center
, enabling space enthusiasts around the world to walk in the footsteps of astronauts.
More than
7
0 cities
in Brazil and
30 Mesoamerican archaeological sites
in Mexico.
Stay tuned for imagery from
Cambridge Bay
, a tiny hamlet in Canada’s Arctic, where the Street View team is collecting imagery with the
trike
.
Get around more easily with the help of Google Maps
With enhanced directions, transit information and traffic data, Google Maps can help you get where you want to go more quickly.
We added turn-by-turn, voice-guided
biking navigation
to Google Maps Navigation (Beta) in 12 countries--more than 330,000 miles of biking directions are now available.
For those of you taking public transportation,
Google Maps now has public transportation schedules for
more than one million transit stops
worldwide in nearly
500 cities
, including New York, London, Tokyo and Sydney.
To make it easier for you to travel by car, we launched
real-time traffic conditions
for more than 130 cities in the U.S., plus the capital cities of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Contribute your local knowledge to Google Maps
Volunteer mappers can improve the accuracy and detail of the maps of their countries.
Our community mapping tool,
Google
Map Maker
, became available in
Ukraine and Poland
, joining more than 200 other countries and regions where Map Maker is already available.
Posted by Brian McClendon, VP Google Maps and Earth
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