Catch the London Underground with Google Maps

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Starting today, you can get public transport directions for London within Google Maps. One of Europe’s largest metropolitan areas, London is a major destination for both business travelers and tourists. More than 1 billion passengers are serviced by Transport for London (TfL) every year across over 18,000 bus stops and over 250 Underground stations.

Let’s say you’re at Trafalgar Square, and you want to visit Madame Tussauds. With a simple directions search, you’ll see all the possible public transport connections. In Maps, click “Get directions” in the left-hand panel, and then the train icon to see public transport directions. Enter your departure location next to A, and your destination next to B. These can be either street addresses or names of popular places, businesses or restaurants. When you’re done, click the “Get directions” button and suggestions for your trip will appear below.

Public transport directions are available on both Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile, so you always have access to a trip planner. When you’re on mobile, Maps even uses your current location to determine the best trip to your destination. Just search for your destination location, select it on the map and choose the “Directions” option. The suggested trips will be based on your location by default, and provide you multiple alternatives whenever possible.

If you’re using an Android-powered device, you can also get public transport directions with Transit Navigation (Beta) in Google Maps. With this new feature, which we launched earlier this month, you’ll get alerts when it’s time to get off the bus or train at your destination or to make a transfer. Transit Navigation is available in all regions where public transport directions are available, including London.


TfL is among the first agencies in a major European city to make its timetable information publicly available through the London Datastore. We’re strong supporters of open data and bringing information out into the open, and believe that making information publicly accessible can be an enormous engine of economic growth and innovation. ITO World has been a great partner in this launch by ensuring TfL’s data was adapted correctly and ready for our use.

Public transport directions are available for all Underground, bus, tram and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) lines, and we’ll include more public transport information as soon as it’s available. Whether you use public transport every day or infrequently, as a commuter, on a business trip or as a tourist, we hope that public transport directions in London make planning your trips more convenient!

Posted by Thijs van As, Associate Product Manager, Transit Directions

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Congratulations Russia, the National Geographic World Champions

(Cross posted on the Official Google and Google Student blogs)

This island has a population of about 57,000 people, with the most settlements concentrated on the west coast. Very little of this island is suitable for agriculture.

After eight rounds of questions from none other than quiz king Alex Trebek himself, the team from Russia was crowned the National Geographic World Champions today at our Mountain View, Calif. headquarters after answering this final question correctly.

(By the way, the answer is Greenland.)

The National Geographic World Champions from Russia (photo courtesy of National Geographic)

Students from 17 regions around the world competed in the 2011 National Geographic World Championship. Today’s final round included answering a series of challenging questions like the one above. The students also interpreted maps and museum artifacts from the University of California Berkeley and fielded questions about live animals from the San Francisco Zoo during the earlier rounds of the competition.

Congratulations to the Russian team and to all of the students who participated. We look forward to seeing where your explorations and knowledge take you.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth

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Google Maps 5.8 for Android adds photo uploads, My Places, and more

Today, Google Maps 5.8 for Android improves Places and Latitude with:

• Upload photos for a Place
• My Places as a simple way to manage the Places you’ve starred and recently viewed
• Descriptive terms for Places in search results
• Add a new Place on-the-go when checking in

Photo upload for a Place

When deciding on a place to go, people often want to know what a place looks like in addition to seeing ratings and reviews. You can now contribute photos to help others get a sense of places. You can now attach your photos to Places, and yours may even become the profile picture for that page. If you want to view or delete any photos you’ve contributed to Places, you can manage uploaded photos in the “Photos for Google Maps” album on your Picasa account.

Left: Uploading pictures to a place. Right: Photos in Android Gallery
My Places and descriptive terms for mobile

In June we announced descriptive terms and ‘My Places’ for the desktop. Both these features are now in Google Maps for mobile. Descriptive terms appear in search results for Places to inform you what businesses are ‘known for,’ such as their ‘eggs benedict’ or being ‘worth the wait.’

Also, My Places for mobile provides quick access to starred and recent Place pages you’ve looked at. You can access My Places by pressing your phone’s menu button while in Google Maps.

Descriptive terms and My Places in Google Maps for mobile
Add a new Place ‘on-the-go’ for check-ins

If you’re out and about and want to check in, we want to make sure you can quickly add a new Place to check into if one isn’t available. This might happen for new businesses or those that haven’t set up a Place page yet. For example, let’s say you’re at Xoogle Xtreme Sports, a new sports shop in your neighborhood. You go to check in but don’t see Xoogle in the list of places to check into and when you do a search still nothing comes up.

Add a Place when checking in, if needed
To solve this, you’ll now see an “Add place” option at the bottom of suggested places. Select that option, and you’ll be prompted to confirm the name and location of the new place. Then a brand new place is added (and you’re checked in). This place will be available for you and others to check into from Latitude, but will not appear as a search result in Google Maps or Google Places.

We’ve also added ‘Bigger text’ to our experimental Labs features and ‘Download map area’ has been renamed ‘Pre-cache map area.’

To start using Google Maps 5.8 for Android, download the update here. This update requires an Android OS 2.1+ device and can be used anywhere Google Maps is currently available. Learn more in our help center.

Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager

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National Geographic World Championship comes to Google

(Cross posted on the Official Google and Google Student blogs)

It’s summer vacation for many kids, but 51 students from 17 different regions have been spending their time off polishing and fine-tuning their geographic skills to prepare for this year’s National Geographic World Championship, a biennial geography competition hosted by the National Geographic Society.

This year, Google is the proud sponsor and on Wednesday, July 27, we’ll host the three final teams from Canada, Chinese Taipei and Russia at our campus in Mountain View, California. The preliminary rounds included a written exam on Sunday and activities at the San Francisco Zoo on Monday morning. Teams ventured to various zoo exhibits and were asked to identify climate maps and geographic locations associated with 10 different animal habitats housed throughout the zoo.

Teams from Canada, Chinese Taipei and Russia will move on to the National Geographic World Championship

Since most of you can’t be here to witness the action in person, we’re going to live stream the finale, hosted by Alex Trebek of the game show JEOPARDY!. Tune into the National Geographic YouTube Channel Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. PDT to cheer on these young competitors from wherever you are in the world.

Through this competition, we aim to inspire the future generation of leaders and innovators to become more geographically literate and have a deeper understanding about the world they live in. We hope you are as excited as we are to see such enthusiasm and passion around geographic education.

Please join us in wishing all of these young geographic experts the best of luck!

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP, Google Earth and Maps

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Explore new large geographic features in Google Earth

Since announcing the "Mountains" layer in April, we’ve been busy working to bring you additional geographic features in Google Earth. Today we’re announcing the availability of mountain ranges, deserts, plains and more under the “Borders and Labels” left Layers panel.

Along with well-known landmarks such as the Appalachian Mountains, the Alps and the Sahara Desert, you’ll also find some less-well-known (but just as interesting) features, including the Lut Desert in southeastern Iran (one of the hottest areas on Earth) and the Canadian Shield in central and eastern Canada (a very large area in where glaciers removed much of the topsoil starting around 4.5 billion years ago).

Lut Desert in southeastern Iran

Canadian Shield in central and eastern Canada

To view these and all the other newly-added features, make sure “Borders and Labels” box is checked in the left Layers panel in Google Earth and look for the green labels.

Knowing that a single label may not do justice to expansive areas such as the Rocky Mountains, we’ve also enabled “mouseover” extents for these geographic features. By simply moving your mouse over the label you can see the full extent of larger formations or regions.

Mouseover extent of the Rocky Mountains

We hope this addition makes it easier for you to explore the world’s greatest natural features.

Posted by Pete Giencke, GIS Data Engineer

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Making local online advertising easy with Google AdWords Express

(Cross posted on the Official Google, Inside AdWords, and Small Business blogs)

Today, we're officially introducing AdWords Express, a faster and simpler way to start advertising online in under five minutes. We first launched this product as Google Boost last October for a small number of local businesses. Since then, we’ve continued to improve the product and enabled all U.S. businesses new to online advertising to reach customers with ease. AdWords Express is designed to help local businesses that aren't already AdWords advertisers create effective campaigns—watch the video below to see how you can create and run an online campaign from start to finish in just a few clicks:



AdWords Express helps potential customers find your website or Place page, and gives you a quick and straightforward way to connect with them and grow your business. You simply provide some basic business information, create your ad, and your campaign is ready to go.



After you sign up, the campaign will be automatically managed for you. AdWords Express will figure out which searches should trigger your ad to appear and displays it when these searches happen. Your ad will be shown in the Ads section of search results pages—on the top or right hand side—and in Google Maps with a distinctive blue pin. Customers can see your ad whether they’re searching on laptops or mobile phones.



As with all our ad products, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad. To make things even easier, AdWords Express optimizes your ads to get the most out of your advertising campaign and budget.

Many businesses are already finding success through AdWords, but we know many of you are looking for an easier way to begin advertising online. Visit www.google.com/awexpress to sign up or learn more about how it works.

Posted by Kiley McEvoy, Product Manager, AdWords Express

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Keeping an ‘eye’ on the 2011 Atlantic and Pacific hurricane seasons

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search Blog)

With the fourth major storm of the 2011 Pacific Hurricane season, Category 5 Hurricane Dora, churning off of Mexico’s Pacific coast, it’s looking like 2011 will be an active year for tropical storms. Today we’d like to introduce some new tools for tracking tropical storms across Google products.

The first new way to get information about current tropical storms is on Google Search, where you can enter “hurricane” (or related terms such as “tropical storm”) and get the latest Atlantic and Pacific tropical storm information courtesy of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. From the list of results associated with Hurricane Center, you’ll find the storm name, the storm type, latest speed and storm direction. Clicking the “Details” link will take you directly to the National Hurricane Center’s page for a specific storm.

You can also keep track of the current tropical storms through Google Earth, where we’ve made tropical storms part of the “default-on” Earth experience (just make sure “Places” is checked in the left Layers panel).

In addition to presenting National Hurricane Center storm data for the the Atlantic and Pacific, we’re also displaying tropical storm information (typhoons, cyclones, etc.) for several other storm-prone water bodies, such as the Indian Ocean and the Tasman Sea with data courtesy of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Hurricane Dora in Google Earth

In Google Earth, you’ll find information on a storm’s intensity, heading, as well as the latest news and advisory information. Where available, we also provide links to download the historical and forecasted storm positions as a KML file. Be sure to turn on the “Clouds” layer under the “Weather” menu in the left Layers panel to visualize the magnitude of each storm.

The latest storm information for Hurricane Dora in Google Earth.

Historical and forecasted storm positions for Hurricane Dora in Google Earth.

We hope these new hurricane tracking tools will keep you informed about the latest storms in your area and around the world.

Posted by Pete Giencke, Google Earth team and Anna Bendersky, Google Search team

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Liquid Galaxy now at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC

Thirty-five years ago this week, the Viking 1 lander touched down on the surface of Mars, beginning an olympian mission of exploration lasting more than 6 years. Today, the Liquid Galaxy immersive Google Earth display lands at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, in the “Moving Beyond Earth” exhibit.

Photo by Mark Avino, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

It’s part of the museum's annual Mars Day! event, where visitors can learn about the red planet, past and future missions to Mars, and talk to scientists active in Mars research. Adding to the excitement, NASA has just announced the location of the landing site for the next mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory. In November, this SUV-sized robot will make the leap into space and is expected to land in Gale Crater, to look for signs that Mars might have once harbored life.

Designed during engineers’ 20% time, Liquid Galaxy consists of several screens in a circular arrangement, all running Google Earth in parallel for an immersive virtual experience. Visitors can use the podium with touchscreen and a 3D mouse to navigate to an up-close and personal near-360-degree view of the landing site in Google Earth, as well as anywhere else on Mars, the Moon, and of course Earth.

Admission to the museum is free, so be sure to stop by the next time your travels take you to the capital of the United States. While you’re there, enjoy the largest collection of historic spacecraft and aircraft in the world, including a proof test article of the Viking Mars Lander. (Of course, the Viking 1 lander itself took a one-way trip!)

If you can’t make the trip to Washington or Mars yourself, you can always explore the Martian surface from the comfort of your own home using Google Earth, checking out the progress of the current crop of robot explorers, seeing the latest imagery from orbiting satellites or scouting out the Mars Science Laboratory’s future landing site for yourself.

Posted by Noel Gorelick, Chief Extraterrestrial Observer

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Updated imagery of flooding near Council Bluffs, Iowa

Since June of 2011, Council Bluffs, Iowa and the surrounding area has experienced record flooding along the Missouri River. Google has a data center in Council Bluffs, along with many employees that live in the city and surrounding region.

Along with our neighbors, we watched with concern as the Missouri River rose to a level not seen in decades. We are grateful for the extraordinary work of the City of Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie County, the Army Corps of Engineers and others who kept the city and much of the surrounding region safe. Our hearts also go out to those who have lost homes and businesses to the rising waters.

We recently worked with our satellite provider, GeoEye, to acquire updated imagery of some of the affected area. This imagery is now available as a KML file and will be live in the Historical Imagery section of Google Earth in the coming days. We hope that it will be of use to emergency responders and the general public.

Eppley Airfield and region to the north (before and after)

Area between Council Bluffs/Omaha and Blair, Nebraska (before and after)

You can access all the new imagery by downloading the KML file and opening in Google Earth.

Posted by Chris Russell, Operations Manager, Council Bluffs data center

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The Ongoing Evolution of Place Pages

Making constant tweaks and adjustments to our user interfaces and overall user experience have always been the norm at Google, and you may have recently heard about our renewed effort across all Google products to make the user experience more focused, elastic and effortless. Changes have already started to appear on Google Maps, and we’ve now simplified our Place pages across desktop and mobile devices as well.

Some of the changes you’ll notice today have been made so you can quickly get a sense for what other people are saying about a place, more easily upload photos of places you’ve been (by using a more obvious “Upload a photo” button), and see reviews in a single section on the page. Since the introduction of Google Places’ local rating and review feature last fall -- originally called Hotpot -- we’ve heard loud and clear that reviews help you find the places that are right for you, especially when you’re able to get recommendations based on your tastes and those of your friends. So we’ve added the call-to-action “Write a review” button to the top of the Place page to encourage you to tell us what you think about places you’ve visited, while at the same time ensuring that you get personalized recommendations in return when you’re signed in to your Google account.

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.

Beyond today’s transition, our long-term vision for local search includes:

• Bringing you more personalized results when you search for local places -- because we understand that information from the people you know is most meaningful;
• Integrating some of the great information that’s been buried on Place pages into your web search experience across all Google platforms;
• Giving you more ways to rate, discover and share places you love faster and easier than ever, wherever you are, and on whichever device you choose.

So whether you’re looking for a great restaurant you haven’t yet tried, or the perfect place to buy a friend’s birthday gift, we hope you continue to find the information on Place pages useful. There have been lots of changes in the nearly two years since Place pages were introduced, and because there’s always more room for improvement, you can expect more changes to come.

Posted by Avni Shah, Director of Product Management

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Building outlines now appearing in London, Paris, Barcelona, and more

Since early 2007, Google Maps has made maps more lifelike by showing 3D building outlines when zoomed into cities. If you’re planning to walk down a street, you should know whether to expect low buildings, skyscrapers, or some cool architecture! Then the release of Google Maps 5.0 for Android ushered in the next-generation of mobile maps where you can rotate, tilt, and zoom in and out of 3D maps on a mobile device.

Now, 3D buildings are available in London, Paris, Barcelona, Stockholm, Singapore, Lisbon, Boulder, and 11 major cities in South Africa. These buildings will appear in both Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile.


View Larger Map
Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa
3D buildings in London and Barcelona
Enjoy the new buildings from Boulder to Bloemfontein!

Posted by Mark Limber, Group Product Manager

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Evolving the look of Google Maps, redux

Hot on the heels of our new style for the Google Maps user interface, today we are pushing out some further improvements to our map design to match the updated look and feel and further improve the usability of our maps.

Amongst the changes you will find a plethora of subtle changes, designed to make the map cleaner, more focused, more visually harmonious, and easier to use. Some highlights to look out for are a brighter and more cheerful color palette, a more integrated and less visually noisy labeling style, subtle improvements to footpaths and minor roads, and cleaner building and land parcel rendering.

Most of these improvements, like many that we’ve made over the last couple of years, are gentle enough that many people won’t even notice the difference. When you add them together, however, and then compare to how the map looked even as recently as two years ago, it’s remarkable to see how dramatic the change is.

Compare how our maps of New York looked in 2009, then again the same time in 2010, and now with the new tiles for 2011. The improved colour scheme and less jarring label outlines help the labels to feel part of the map, as opposed to a distracting overlay. It’s also easier to distinguish the city name, neighborhoods, and roads through subtle changes in label color:

The visually heavy highway shields are now integrated into the road labels, and the brighter and cleaner style shifts the focus onto the road names and prominent landmarks in the area. London is one place that benefits from this:


The style evolution has enabled us to place more information whilst still making the map feel simpler. In the case of Sydney, thinner and cleaner roads, better representation of tunnels, more subtle footpaths in the parks, and more subtle labeling all contribute:


We hope you enjoyed this quick retrospective and find the new improvements to the map style helpful. There are many more than have been highlighted here, so have a look around Google Maps today and see if you can spot any improvements to your local area. Happy exploring!

Posted by Jonah Jones, User Experience Designer

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Imagery Update: Week of July 18th

The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 proposed a highly regular grid pattern as the layout for an island that was mostly farmland and wilderness in a still-young country. Two hundred years after the streets and avenues were dreamed up, the landscape of New York City has changed dramatically as skyscrapers have been built, parks have been planted and the population has increased by millions. Today’s latest batch of updated imagery reveals new, high resolution imagery of Manhattan. It’s now live in Google Earth and will appear in Google Maps soon.

Times Square has become much more pedestrian-friendly.

Construction at the World Trade Center site is making clear progress.

Google NYC is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. I’m one of more than 2,000 Googlers here (split between Sales, Engineering, and other functions), making us the second-largest Google location. (Care to join us?) The sales team sits in Chelsea Market, a former Nabisco factory where Oreos were invented and which envelops the elevated High Line, which was recently converted into a park.

This new batch of imagery also covers another Google hometown: Boulder, Colorado, home to the 3D team that brings you Google SketchUp and the Google 3D Warehouse. That team expanded two months ago across the street.


Want to check out how these places used to look? Use the Historical Imagery feature of Google Earth to slide back the clock around the world. And as always, we encourage you to check out more of the areas that can be seen in our latest imagery update. Enjoy!

High resolution aerial updates:
Boise, ID; Denver, CO; Topeka, KS; St Cloud, MN; Ashland, WI; Ironwood, MI; Flint, MI; Ft Wayne, IN; Cape Girardeau, MO; Bowling Green, KY; Glasgow, KY; Greenville, NC; Atlantic City, NJ; Syracuse, NY; Manhattan, NY

Countries/regions receiving high resolution satellite updates:
Canada, United States, Mexico, Cuba, The Bahamas, The Dominican Republic, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Madagascar, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Taiwan, The Philippines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand

These updates are now available in Google Earth and coming soon to Google Maps. To get a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

To get automatic updates when we update places you care about, set your targets at Follow Your World and you’ll be among the first to know by email.

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Product Marketing Manager

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Celebrate Marine Day by exploring the shinkai

The ocean covers approximately 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and yet remains one of the most mysterious places on the planet. In Japan, bodies of water with depths over 200m (656 feet) are referred to as shinkai, or deep sea. These dark regions of the ocean do not receive light and water pressure is up to 100x higher than at the surface, making the shinkai inaccessible to most exploration.

In honor of Marine Day in Japan, we collaborated with JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) and the manned Shinkai 6500 submarine to share this hidden world through Google Earth. Dive beneath the surface to explore the shinkai, as well as shipwrecks, research discoveries, surf spots and more.

The Shinkai 6500 is able to dive to depths of 6,500m (21,325 feet), a feat few other vessels can match. It is equipped with a variety of research devices such as search lights, cameras and robotic arms. A cockpit enables three pilots to withstand the extreme conditions and even includes a spyglass for visual exploration of the deepest parts of the ocean.

Shinkai 6500’s cockpit

Shinkai 6500’s mission is to bring the secrets of the deep sea to the surface for marine enthusiasts. It studies movement of the Earth’s interior, living organisms equipped to survive the most extreme conditions and the impact of hydrothermal activity on the environment.

In order to bring this research to life, we worked with JAMSTEC to create a Google Earth tour showcasing past Shinkai 6500 endeavors to the ocean floor. Join the crew by downloading the KML file (in English or Japanese) and opening in Google Earth.

The Shinkai 6500 tour highlights previous deep sea missions and marine life.

As the submarine descends, you will learn more about the vessel and the creatures it finds in the deepest parts of the ocean, including historical imagery from past ventures. Discover unique deep sea features and lifeforms - from rare translucent fish such as the Liparis to hydrothermal vents known as white smokers.

Learn more about life at the bottom of the sea as the Shinkai 6500 explores the Google Earth ocean.

We hope the Shinkai 6500 inspires you to continue to explore the deep sea and its hidden treasures. We recommend starting with the ocean seafloor tour or deep sea vents ridge 2000. You can find even more ocean tours in the Ocean Showcase on the Google Earth website.

Posted by Yosuke Murakami, Program Manager, Geo Japan

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UNITAR/UNOSAT team up with Google Map Maker to boost impact of community mapping for disaster relief and humanitarian aid

In times of disaster and humanitarian needs, relief activities are sometimes carried out in chaotic and dynamic conditions in which multiple groups need to interact. First responders need to quickly build an on-the-ground picture of where people are, what condition they are in, what their needs are, what services are still available, and what resources have survived. This helps relief and humanitarian responders as well as local planners to plot and obtain a big picture of the impact of the disaster. They are then able to target their efforts and mobilize their resources of equipment, personnel, and supplies. Unfortunately, despite many technical and institutional advances, basic data is often not readily available on the onset of a disaster.

As Einar Bjorgo, UNITAR/UNOSAT's head of Rapid Mapping, Applications and User Relations, has noted, Google Map Maker addresses a significant part of this data gap by capturing community knowledge -- verified through community moderation -- and making it available in near real-time. UNITAR/UNOSAT is the only operational UN program fully focused on providing satellite imagery and mapping products to the humanitarian community, including its United Nations’ sister agencies and governments -- and it now does so largely with Google’s Map Maker data.

Today, after years of successful collaboration, UNITAR/UNOSAT (the operational satellite applications program of UNITAR) and Google have strengthened their joint efforts by signing an agreement that will give the crisis response and humanitarian community increased access to Google Map Maker source data for use in their disaster response and humanitarian activities, in more than 150 countries around the world.*

Under this agreement UNITAR/UNOSAT will act as a conduit within the United Nations family and its Member States to make Google Map Maker data more widely and easily available to aid organizations in the event of major disasters and for humanitarian efforts. In addition, government and United Nations agencies will be able to contact UNOSAT/UNITAR (email unosat@unitar.org) for consideration as potential licensees of the Google Map Maker data, for their disaster response, humanitarian and development projects. This agreement builds on dozens of previous joint mapping efforts between UNITAR/UNOSAT and Google, such as the ones that were coordinated for Pakistan, Sudan, and West Africa.

UNOSAT Manager Francesco Pisano shared his thoughts, noting that "Google Map Maker gives us access to baseline data over areas where detailed information is usually unavailable. Now roads, bridges, buildings, and other services, with local and official names, can be mapped and damages tracked in near real-time. This new ability to integrate Google Map Maker data more widely into our satellite analysis will have a monumental impact on UNOSAT’s ongoing efforts to make geographic information a key part of providing information for modern humanitarian relief. This agreement will also bring key benefits to the broader disaster and humanitarian community by making Google Map Maker data more widely and easily available.”

UNOSAT map of the flood-affected areas in Pakistan. It uses Map Maker data as its primary source of Road and Place names data.
With this new agreement with UNITAR/UNOSAT, we are expanding our ability to share useful map data that the Map Maker community contributes with the world, for increased benefit to people all over in preventing and recovering from man-made and natural hardships. We’re thrilled to deepen our relationship with the United Nations, and their partners. We welcome you to join the Map Your World Community, and start mapping to contribute to this effort and increase the quality of maps data. If you are one of our long-term mappers, thank you for your efforts that inspire us to keep finding ways to together make a positive difference to the world. Keep mapping!

Posted by France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

*Countries for which UNITAR/UNOSAT will have access to Google Map Maker data: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bolivia, Botswana, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Brunei,Burkina Faso, Burundi,Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde,Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial, Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Island, North Korea, Northern Mariana Islands, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Pitcairn Islands, Qatar, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Wallis and Futuna, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

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Live traffic information for 13 European countries

Since introducing the live traffic feature on Google Maps in 2008, our team has been working hard to make this feature available to more users in more countries. Just in time for summer travel, we’re delighted to announce that today we’re making traffic available in 13 countries in Europe. The new road traffic information is in the traffic layer on Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile, and Google Maps Navigation (Beta).

Left: Traffic layer Right: Getting routed around traffic in
Google Maps Navigation
Today we’re announcing new coverage in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland. Coverage includes all freeways and highways, as well as large roads in major cities. Users in the UK will also benefit from a finer grain of street level coverage.

Our Maps team in Zurich is especially excited about this release because many of us will now be able to personally benefit from the expansion of this traffic feature. For example, although I take public transit to work every day, I enjoy weekend drives to the Austrian Alps or the Italian lakes region, and having live traffic available on my phone helps me avoid the traffic at the Gotthard tunnel.

Traffic in Gotthard Tunnel, Switzerland
The live traffic layer is regularly updated to show information for traffic events from the last 5-10 minutes. Finally, you can learn more about typical traffic conditions for specific times and days of the week by clicking the “change” link in the traffic legend on Google Maps, and setting the day of week and time.

Posted by Csaba Garay, Technical Account Manager

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A cause to celebrate in Pakistan with Google Map Maker

The month of June proved fruitful for mapping enthusiasts, tech buffs, and entrepreneurs throughout Pakistan as they gathered for a series of Google MapUps organized at universities in three major cities: Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

Led by Google Pakistan Country Consultant, Badar Khushnood and a trio of Pakistan’s Map Maker Advocates—Faraz Ahmad, Jabran Rafique and Omer Sheikh—the three events welcomed a total of 150 participants to learn the ins and outs of Google Map Maker. The intent of the MapUps was to guide new users through the process of mapping their cities and neighborhoods while stressing the importance of having a complete map of Pakistan available online.


Recent mapping efforts in Pakistan have been predominantly aligned with relief efforts following Pakistan’s 2010 floods and landslides, as demonstrated by Omer, Jabran and Faraz. Dr. Sayeed Ghani spoke at the Karachi MapUp about Sindh Flood Maps, his community-based geographic information system (GIS) that implements a Google Maps API to assist in disaster management. Dr. Sohaib Khan, who co-hosted the Lahore MapUp, has also focused on flood relief.

On a basic level, the aim of MapUps is to teach new and aspiring mappers the fundamentals of Map Maker, and to bring them together to map their community. Omer explained that “The idea is to get the participants started in the hope that they will continue mapping in the future.” Badar Khushnood and our Mapping Advocates ultimately highlighted the tools and motivation behind mapping, highlighting it as influential, inspirational, and humanitarian.

Google MapUp, NU-FAST, Islamabad, Pakistan
Learn more about hosting a Google MapUp in your own community, and be sure to visit our Advocates and other passionate and helpful mappers in our Map Your World Community.

Posted by Lori Savageau, Community Manager

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Using Street View to digitally archive Japan’s disaster zones

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated the coastal communities of Eastern Japan, we at Google tried to find ways to use our technologies in support of relief activities. This started immediately after the quake with our Person Finder to help locate displaced individuals, and more recently we’ve started projects to spur economic recovery in the affected areas, such as the “YouTube Business Support Channel,” which enables local businesses to promote their products and establishments to a nationwide audience.

We also believe that the Street View feature in Google Maps can be a useful tool to offer street-level imagery of the recovery efforts. Many photographers felt the disaster couldn’t be captured in just one photo or with a single camera, but immersive, 360-degree panoramic images can help people — especially those abroad — better understand the scope of the destruction.


On July 8, we announced that we’ll be driving our Street View cars across major cities (such as Sendai) and coastal cities of the Tohoku region to not only help communicate the current state of the disaster-affected areas, but also to digitally archive the area’s landscapes for future generations. This imagery will help people in Japan and across the world remember and observe the tragedy of March 11, 2011.

In addition to preserving history through Street View, the team in Japan has been busy publishing 360-degree imagery of more than 100 famous sites across Japan through our Street View Partner Program. The places that have partnered with us to share views of their locations on Google Maps include UNESCO world heritage sites Yakushi-ji temple, Toshodai-ji temple, and Kasuga-Taisha shrine in the ancient capital city of Nara. We’re also continuing the Business Photos project in Japan and are working with hundreds of businesses to photograph their interiors, get those images online, and show both local customers and visitors that they are open for business.

Yakushi-ji Temple in Nara, Japan
If you’re interested in directly supporting the ongoing relief effort in Japan, you can find more information regarding the disaster and resources for those in need at our Crisis Response page in English and Japanese.

Posted by Ken Tokusei, Product Management Director, Geo Asia-Pacific, on behalf of Google Japan and international Crisis Response teams

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Let Historypin be your guide

Editor’s Note: Today's guest author is Nick Stanhope, co-founder and executive director of an awesome and inspiring website out of the UK called Historypin. We collaborated with the site for its launch as a beta last year, and Nick is writing a guest post to announce today's official launch of Historypin with a new mobile app and expanded global availability. His team’s labor of love illustrates the amazing ways individuals and organizations can use Google Maps and Street View to share new (or in this case, old) views of the world around us.

A few years ago, just before she passed away, my Gran and I spent a lot of time together looking through some of her old photos and family videos, sharing stories and learning a bit more about each other’s lives. This picture of my Gran and Great Auntie Jenny, working as land girls in the summer of 1943, was one of my favourites.

Everyone can identify with this sense of wistfulness and nostalgia that memories often evoke. Sometimes it’s triggered by talking to a grandparent about what they did at your age, by learning more about the guy in the photo who looks like a Victorian version of your Uncle Phil, or by chatting with an older neighbour about how different Main Street looked fifty years ago.

This is what Historypin is all about: conversations between different generations and neighbours, time spent around sights and sounds of the past, stories remembered and shared and comparisons made between then and now. And today, we’re thrilled to announce its graduation from last year’s beta phase with worldwide availability, the addition of a new mobile app, and a bunch of other exciting new developments.

Historypin is a website and smartphone app that uses Google technology in new and creative ways. You can explore old photos, videos and audio clips that have been “pinned” onto Google Maps (which you can search not only by location but also by date), compare these glimpses of the past with how they look in today by seeing them overlaid onto Street View, immerse yourself in local history using the Android app, journey through Tours and Collections of featured content and, best of all, “pin” your own history as photos, videos, audio clips and stories to the site.

And by continuing to work closely with Google, we’re excited about the improvements to come as well. Later this year, we’ll launch additional new features like embed tools that enable you to put Historypin on your own site, Historypin channels that will allow you to create your own distinct experiences, and pinning games that invite the community to pin content that we and our partners know little about.

But, really, it’s not about the tech. It’s about those conversations - little ones, across families and streets, and big ones, involving millions of citizen historians. Through all of these conversations, we can create a place to explore history in amazing ways and help families and neighbourhoods come together around what we all share: history.



Posted by Nick Stanhope, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Historypin

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Street View comes to glamorous Monaco

Last week the spotlight was on Monaco for the royal wedding between Albert II, Prince of Monaco, and Charlene Wittstock. Today we are excited to announce that we are bringing Street View in Google Maps to the glamorous principality.

Monaco may be the second smallest country in the world, only the Vatican City is smaller, but it has many interesting sites and roads.

You can now explore the streets made famous by the annual Formula One Monaco Grand Prix, one of the most prestigious automobile races in the world. The circuit snakes around the principality and is known for its tight corners and the legendary tunnel.


View Larger Map

Cathédrale de Monaco
Monaco’s elegant hotels and casinos are also now available on Street View, along with its stunning views of the French Rivieria and the Mediterranean Sea.

Port de Cap d'Ail, Monaco
We hope you enjoy this virtual trip to Monaco, the 30th country where immersive, 360-degree street-level views are now available on Google Maps. We’re thrilled to share the new imagery with you on the heels of last week’s biggest Street View update ever, and look forward to bringing many more locales to Street View for you to explore.

Posted by Kei Kawai, Senior Product Manager

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South Sudanese sing and map their way to independence

On July 9, South Sudan will officially be independent, becoming Africa’s 54th state.

In anticipation of this significant development, the World Bank, UNOSAT, RCMRD, Satellite Sentinel Project and Google organized a South Sudan Community Mapping event in Nairobi on June 30. This was the second in a series of mapping events intended to encourage local people to create accurate and detailed maps of South Sudan, to help them navigate their path to independence. There were over 100 attendees in the room, mostly Sudanese -- university students, humanitarian workers, journalists, developers, donors, citizens -- coming from Nairobi and its surroundings, but also as far as Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

The lives of the South Sudanese are anchored to their history and land. The event started with the sharing of prayers, stories and songs, allowing each of us to visualize the rivers, sheep, roads, and people. Drawn from these songs, the mapping of South Sudan with Google Map Maker began. I was excited to see schools, roads, rivers, historical monuments, and cemeteries being mapped over cities such as Aweil, Boma, Bor, Malakal, Rumbek, Tonga, Torit, and more.

Community Mapping Event in Nairobi on June 30, 2011
Many were interested in health resource mapping which can dramatically impact the lives of their new countrymen. Every year in South Sudan about one in every seven children dies before the age of five; the maternity mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, and only 30% of the population has access to health care. For Charles Mona, Director GIS, Remote Sensing & Cartography of the South Sudan Government, quality health resource maps would be great tools for improved health care planning, resource allocation, advocacy, and also increased access to health services for the local population. This is only one example of how accurate maps can help various organizations provide better services to the the South Sudanese.

Happy independence day to the South Sudanese! Together, let’s continue mapping, and stay connected via our Sudan-specific email discussions. The next Community Mapping event will be in Juba, so stay tuned for more details.

Posted by France Lamy, Program Manager for Google.org

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Expanded 3D Buildings coverage

(Cross-posted on the Official SketchUp Blog)

Looking for new 3D cities to explore in far off places? Well, you’re in luck! We’ve been hard at work expanding our 3D coverage by adding ten of thousands of 3D buildings to these cities:

• Berkeley, California USA
• Cologne, Germany
• The Hague, Netherlands

See the new buildings for yourself with the “3D Buildings” layer in Google Earth or by using Google Maps with Earth view.

Happy touring!

Posted by Catherine Moats, 3D Data Specialist

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“Download map area” added to Labs in Google Maps for Android

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

One way we bring you new product features is through Google Labs—a collection of fun, experimental features you can turn on if you’re interested in the functionality. In fact, Google Maps itself started as a lab. In addition to our desktop Maps Labs, Google Maps for Android has a few tricks you can try out right from your phone. We’d like to introduce you to one new experimental feature, “Download map area,” but also remind you of two other ones we already have: “Scale bar” and “Measure.”

Download map area
When you’re visiting an unfamiliar location, Google Maps for mobile is great for getting an idea of how close you are to your destination, where streets and landmarks are in relation to each other, or just for getting “un-lost.” But what if you don’t have a data signal, or you’re abroad and don’t have a data plan? We say that if you use Google Maps for mobile, you’ll never need to carry a paper map again. The “Download map area” lab in Google Maps 5.7 for Android is a step in making that statement true even when you’re offline.

Let’s say later you’re visiting Bordeaux during a trip to France. If you were to open Google Maps for mobile and zoom into Bordeaux without data coverage or wifi, you’d see the image on the left:

Left: Bordeaux with no data or wifi. Right: Bordeaux with downloaded map area
That’s not particularly useful when you’re trying to find out how close you are to the Cathedrale St. Andre. But a little advance planning and “Download map area” can help. Before you take your trip, while you still have access to WiFi or data coverage, you can open up any Places page in the world, click “More” to get the Place page menu, and download Google’s maps for a 10-mile radius.

Left: Tap a landmark to enter its Place page Right: Place page “more options” menu
The download can take as little as a minute or two. This download stores only the base map tiles and the landmarks on the map, so you still need a data connection to see satellite view and 3D buildings, search for Places and get directions. But we hope the level of detail available will help you find your way!

Left: Status screen for download. Right: Coverage of downloaded map area
All your downloaded map areas can be managed in your Google Maps cache settings so you can delete maps you no longer need or if you want to free up storage. After 30 days, all downloaded map areas will be removed from your cache; they can be re-downloaded any time.

Scale bar
Google Maps has approximately 20 different zoom levels that range from a 2,000 mile scale to a 20 foot scale. With finger gestures making it really quick and easy to zoom in and out, sometimes it’s not always clear what zoom level you’re at. What might be just a few streets away can be quite a long walk depending on the scale. To help with this, you can turn on a scale bar, which updates based on your zoom level.

Scale bar in the lower left
Measure
If you ever need to know the distance between San Francisco and New York (about 2602 miles) or between any other two points on the map, the “Measure” lab can help you out. Once it’s enabled, you’ll notice a tape measure icon just above the zoom buttons. After clicking that icon, you’ll be prompted to tap two points on the map and Google Maps will calculate the straight distance between those points (this direct distance is “as the crow flies”).

Example of the “Measure” Labs feature
To access Labs on your phone, press your phone’s menu button once in Google Maps, choose “More” and select Labs. On a tablet, click the menu button in the upper-right corner of Maps. The “Download map area” lab requires Android 2.1+ and the latest version of Google Maps. We look forward to bringing you more experimental features soon and hope you enjoy trying out Labs in Google Maps for Android.

Posted by Chikai Ohazama, Director of Product Management, Google Maps for mobile

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