The official blog for Google Maps
Where are we going to eat? See inside before you decide!
July 18, 2013
“Where are we going to eat?”
Google Maps
can make your decision easier by helping you preview, browse and navigate your way to a restaurant that suits your appetite.
Let’s say you’re in New York City, home to over 25,000 restaurants, just before the start of
NYC Restaurant Week (TM)
(July 22 - August 16). You can quickly narrow down the choices by picking from a list of eateries participating in their summer’s
Restaurant Week
.
Google Maps
lets you see the interiors of more than 50% of participating restaurants with
Business Photos
, so that you can make sure you’re choosing the right setting for your meal out. Street View allows you to take a closer look at the exterior of any destination, and even virtually stroll through the surrounding neighborhood.
\
Preview and See Inside
Fig and Olive
Get a preview from your phone or tablet (Featured:
Cipriani Dolci
&
Maialino
)
For more specialized suggestions, you can rely on
Zagat lists, ratings and reviews
, which can also be found in Google Maps. Zagat–the trusted authority for exceptional experiences—offers reviews and ratings for food, decor and service, to help you find the perfect spot every time. Or you can continue to browse and discover new places to eat and drink with our Explore feature.
Hungry for more? Find us on the
NYC Restaurant Week
website to explore more with Google Maps. If you still can’t decide on which participating restaurant to dine at, we offer this advice: follow your gut. That, and use Google Maps to keep up with the adventure your palate is about to embark on.
Preview and make a reservation at
Aldea on NYC Restaurant Week
Happy eating!
Posted by Evelyn Chang, Google Maps Summer Intern and NYC Foodie
Google Maps is now available for iPhone
December 12, 2012
(Cross posted on
Official Google Blog
)
People around the world have been asking for Google Maps on iPhone. Starting today, we’re pleased to announce that Google Maps is here—rolling out across the world in the
Apple App Store
. It’s designed from the ground up to combine the comprehensiveness and accuracy of Google Maps with an interface that makes finding what you’re looking for faster and easier.
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. The search box at the top is a good place to start—perhaps by entering the name of a new and interesting restaurant. An expandable info sheet at the bottom shows the address, opening hours, ratings and reviews, images, directions and other information.
At the heart of this app is our
constantly improving map of the world
that includes detailed information for more than 80 million businesses and points of interest. Preview where you want to go with Street View and see inside places with
Business Photos
to decide on a table or see if it’s better at the bar. To get you there, you’ve got voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation, live traffic conditions to avoid the jams and if you want to use public transportation, find information for more than one million public transit stops.
The world around us is constantly changing and, thanks to feedback from you, we make tens of thousands of daily updates to keep Google Maps accurate and comprehensive. Here’s a helpful hint for the new app: if you see something off, simply shake your phone to send us feedback.
To complete the Google Maps ecosystem, we’re also releasing the Google Maps SDK for iOS, and a simple
URL scheme
to help developers use Google Maps when building their beautiful and innovative apps.
The new Google Maps app is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch (4th gen) iOS 5.1 and higher, in
more than 40 countries
and 29 languages, including Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Please note some of the features mentioned in this post aren’t available in all countries.
Visit the App Store today and download the new Google Maps app. We believe this delightful new experience is a great starting point—and we’ll continue to improve Google Maps for you, every day.
Posted by Daniel Graf, Director, Google Maps for Mobile
An easier way to find panoramic interior imagery in Google Maps
September 18, 2012
Together with thousands of participating businesses owners
around the world
, we’ve been working hard to improve the comprehensiveness of interior, panoramic imagery available on Google and Google Maps.
Now, if you’re searching or browsing Google Maps and want to check out what a business looks like on the inside, we’ve improved your ability to find and view these 360-degree panoramics. Simply drag and drop the orange Pegman on the left hand side of your screen onto an orange circle on the map. Voila! You’ll be virtually transported through the doors, and able to pan around and explore the interior of the establishment.
Drop Pegman on the orange dots to get 360 degree interior views of participating businesses
From restaurants to retail shops to beauty salons and more, these interior
Business Photos
on Google Maps give you the feeling of being there, and the comfort of knowing what to expect when you arrive. Whatever the occasion, they can help you find a place with the right ambiance for a
dinner date in Orlando, Florida
,
a resort in Canary Islands, Spain
, or even preview an
antique store in Austin, Texas
.
To give you an even better idea of where and how you can find these helpful interior Business Photos, watch this video. Then let Google Maps help you explore the interiors of the participating places in your area.
Posted by Shailesh Nalawadi, Product Manager
Google Maps heads north...way north
August 22, 2012
Search for [cambridge bay] on
Google Maps
and you’ll fly to a tiny hamlet located deep in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut in Canada’s Arctic, surrounded by an intricate lacework of tundra, waterways and breaking ice. High above the Arctic circle, it’s a place reachable only by plane or boat. Zoom in on the map, and this isolated village of 1,500 people appears as only a handful of streets, with names like Omingmak (“musk ox”) Street and Tigiganiak (“fox”) Road.
View Larger Map
Cambridge Bay in Google Maps
There are 4,000 years’ worth of stories waiting to be told on this map. Today, we’re setting out on an ambitious mission to tell some of those stories and to build the most comprehensive map of the region to date. It is the furthest north the Google Maps Street View team has traveled in Canada, and our first visit to Nunavut. Using the tools of
21st century cartography
, we’re empowering a community and putting Cambridge Bay on the proverbial map of tomorrow.
The hamlet of Cambridge Bay
We’re not doing it alone, but with the help of the community and residents like Chris Kalluk. We first met Chris, who works for the nonprofit
Nunavut Tunngavik
, last September at our
Google Earth Outreach
workshop in Vancouver, where he learned how to edit
Google Maps
data using
Google Map Maker
. Today Chris played host to a
community Map Up
event in Cambridge Bay, where village elders, local mapping experts and teenagers from the nearby high school gathered around a dozen Chromebooks and used Map Maker to add new roads, rivers and lakes to the Google Map of Cambridge Bay and Canada's North. But they didn’t stop there. Using both English and Inuktitut, one of Nunavut’s official languages, they added the hospital, daycare, a nine-hole golf course, a territorial park and, finally, the remnants of an ancient Dorset stone longhouse which pre-dates Inuit culture.
Catherine Moats, a member of the Google Map Maker Team, working with Chris Kalluk and others at the Community Map Up.
Now we’re pedaling the
Street View trike
around the gravel roads of the hamlet and using a tripod—the same used to capture
business interiors
—to collect imagery of these amazing places. We’ll train Chris and others in the community to use some of this equipment so they can travel to other communities in Nunavut and continue to build the most comprehensive and accurate map of Canada’s Arctic. As Chris put it to us, “This is a place with a vast amount of local knowledge and a rich history. By putting these tools in the hands of our people, we will tell Nunavut’s story to the world.”
The Street View Trike collecting imagery of Cambridge Bay.
So stay tuned, world. We look forward to sharing with you the spectacular beauty and rich culture of Canada’s Arctic—one of the most isolated places on the planet that will soon be, thanks to the people of Cambridge Bay, just a click away.
Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach team
Become an Antarctic explorer with panoramic imagery
July 17, 2012
(Cross posted to
the Official Google Blog
)
In the winter of 1913, a British newspaper ran
an advertisement
to promote the latest imperial expedition to Antarctica, apparently placed by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. It read, "
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.
" While the ad appears apocryphal, the dangerous nature of the journey to the South Pole is certainly not—as explorers like Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott and Shackleton himself discovered as they tried to become the first men to reach it.
Back in September 2010, we launched the first
Street View imagery of the Antarctic
, enabling people from more habitable lands to see penguins in Antarctica for the first time. Today we’re bringing you additional panoramic imagery of historic Antarctic locations that you can view from the comfort of your homes. We’ll be posting this special collection to our
World Wonders site
, where you can learn more about the history of South Pole exploration.
With the help of the
Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota
and the
New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust
, we’ve added 360-imagery of many important spots, inside and out, such as the
South Pole Telescope
,
Shackleton's hut
,
Scott’s hut
,
Cape Royds Adélie Penguin Rookery
and the
Ceremonial South Pole
.
The ceremonial South Pole -
View Larger Map
The interior of Shackleton’s Hut demonstrates the host of supplies used in early 20th century Antarctic expeditions—everything from medicine and food to candles and cargo sleds can be found neatly stored inside. (
View Larger Map
)
With this technology, you can go inside places like Shackleton’s Hut (pictured above) and the other small wooden buildings that served as bases from which the explorers launched their expeditions. They were built to withstand the drastic weather conditions only for the few short years that the explorers inhabited them, but remarkably, after more than a century, the structures are still intact, along with well-preserved examples of the food, medicine, survival gear and equipment used during the expeditions. Now anyone can explore these huts and get insight into how these men lived for months at a time.
The landscape outside of Robert Falcon Scott’s supply hut conveys just how desolate the area is. For these early explorers, the supply huts were an oasis of warmth and comfort in a cold and inhospitable landscape. (
View Larger Map)
This new imagery was collected with a lightweight tripod camera with a fisheye lens—equipment typically used to capture business interiors through the
Business Photos program
. We worked with this technology because of its portability, reliability and ease-of-use (our
Street View trikes
wouldn’t be much use in the snow).
The goal of these efforts is to provide scientists and travel (or penguin) enthusiasts all over the world with the most accurate, high-resolution data of these important historic locations. With this access, schoolchildren as far as Bangalore can count penguin colonies on Snow Hill Island, and geologists in Georgia can trace sedimentary layers in the Dry Valleys from the comfort of their desks. Feel free to leave your boots and mittens behind, and embark on a trip to Antarctica.
Posted by Alex Starns, Technical Program Manager, Street View
Go offline with Google Maps for Android
June 27, 2012
Having an Internet connection has always been a key requirement for using Google Maps for Android... until now.
A few weeks ago
we told you that offline Google Maps for Android was coming. Now, you can download the latest version of the
app in Google Play
, then select and save a region of a map from more than 150 countries for use offline. Whether travelling internationally, carrying a WiFi-only device, heading underground on the subway or restricting your mobile data usage, you can now save up to six large metro areas (e.g., Greater London,
Paris
, or New York City and surrounding area) and use Google Maps for Android to find your way.
Let’s say you find yourself traveling to London this summer. Before you head off on your trip, simply find the area that you’ll be visiting. Then select “Make available offline” from the menu and verify the area that you would like to save.
Below the map, you’ll see we estimate the file size for you, so you know how much space it will take on your device. Once you confirm your selection the map will immediately start downloading.
Save an area and go to My Places to see all your offline maps
If you have GPS enabled on the device, the blue dot will still work without a data connection so you know where you are, and if your device has a compass you can orient yourself without 3G or WiFi connectivity.
So whether you’re traveling internationally or underground, we hope
offline maps
will help you get around.
Today we’re also releasing a smoother and faster Compass Mode for Street View within Google Maps for Android. It’s the next best thing to being there, because your device becomes a window into a 360-degree, panoramic view of the outdoor or interior location through
Business Photos
. To experience the improved qualities of this feature you need a device with Google Maps for Android, Android 3.0 or higher and a gyroscope sensor plus version 1.8.1 of
Street View on Google Maps
.
See inside District wine bar in San Francisco
To learn more about Google Maps for Android features,
start here
.
Posted by Jiabei Lei, Software Engineer, Google Maps Mobile
Bringing Business Photos to more users and business owners
May 1, 2012
Since April 2010, we’ve been testing and developing the
Business Photos program
, which gives users a virtual peek inside businesses through interactive 360-degree imagery. After hearing your
positive feedback
about how showing off panoramic views of your business interiors helps you attract potential customers, we’re excited to announce further expansion of this program. Starting today, in addition to the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France, this service is now available in Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands.
Through the Business Photos program, if you’re a business owner in any of these locations around the world, getting started is easy. Just hire a
Trusted Photographer
in your area to take pictures of your establishment at a time convenient for you. Panoramas are created using the photos, and customers can easily find the resulting panoramic images on Google.com, on Google Maps, and on your Google Places listing. This self-service model, introduced
several months ago
, not only supports talented photographers in your local community, but also gives people who are thinking about visiting your location a sense of what they can expect when they walk through your doors. And if a local photographer isn’t yet available in your neighborhood,
let us know
so we can figure out where else to expand the program.
And whether you’re a professional photographer or an enthusiastic amateur, we’d love to have you on board! We are actively recruiting more Trusted Photographers to bring imagery of more local businesses online for millions across the globe to see. Visit our
website for photographers
to learn more and
sign up
.
View Larger Map
Click and drag to view the inside of
Casa Artelexia
in San Diego, California
And if you’re simply curious and want to explore businesses — from top-rated restaurants to exotic pet stores — check out this
gallery of interior business photos
on the Street View website.
Posted by Gadi Royz, Product Manager, Google Maps
Welcome customers into your business on Google
January 26, 2012
(
Cross-posted on the
Small Business Blog
.)
When we initially announced the
Business Photos pilot program
, we wanted to give business owners an easy way to get customers in the door online using interactive, high-quality, 360-degree images of places on Google Maps and on Google Search results. With thousands of businesses under our belt — from
salons
to
gift shops
— we’ve been hearing the same question again and again from both business owners and photographers alike: How can I participate?
Well, with the overwhelming success of the first pilot, we’ve decided to unveil a complementary initiative that will help us reach more interested business owners, more quickly: Trusted Photographers.
View Larger Map
Click and drag to view the inside of
Spice Market
, New York City.
It’s simple. Visit our
new website
and search for a Google Trusted Photographer in your area. Either email or call a photographer in your area to schedule a time and agree on a price that you will pay the photographer for a photoshoot of your business. This self-serve model makes for easier scheduling and quicker turnaround, while also supporting the local photographers in your community. During the hour it should take for the shoot, you can collaborate with the photographer about how best to display and capture your business. When finished, the photographer will upload the images to Google, and shortly thereafter, you’ll see 360-degree panoramic views of your business on Google.com, Google Maps and on your Google Places listing.
See how Business Photos has helped
Toy Joy
of Austin, Texas.
Trusted Photographers are available in 14 U.S. cities, as well as in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France. Don’t see a photographer in your area?
Let us know
, as that will help us determine where more Trusted Photographers are needed.
Posted by Gadi Royz, Product Manager, Google Maps
Visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial with Google Maps
August 5, 2011
This past March, we
announced
Street View imagery of the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial
. Known as the “Atomic Bomb Dome,” the Memorial bears witness to the devastation of nuclear war. The once proud pre-war structure nearly destroyed by the bomb still stands unrestored -- a monument to those lost and a powerful symbol of peace.
Yesterday in Japan, we went one step further, making new imagery of the interior of the Memorial available via its Place page. While millions have visited the Memorial, you can only safely view it from the outside, standing behind a fence, because of the extent of the damage.
View Larger Map
However iconic the Dome may be, it’s difficult to comprehend the magnitude and scope of the devastation from the outside of the building. But with the support of the Hiroshima city government, we gathered hi-resolution imagery that actually enables you to “walk” through the building room by room, using the same
technology
we’ve used to photograph other historic monuments around the world. The difference here is that while you can wander the gardens of Versailles or streets of Rome in person, the only way you can access the interior of the structure is digitally.
We launched this imagery in Japan on August 5th, one day before the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. You can access this collection via the Memorial’s
Place page
, or start exploring via this
link
. As with all of our special collections, we hope this imagery helps people around the world virtually travel to places they’d never otherwise have a chance to see.
Posted by Wakaba Okura, Program Manager
Using Street View to digitally archive Japan’s disaster zones
July 11, 2011
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
Showcase your business with a 360-degree perspective
May 12, 2011
When I’m looking for a restaurant in San Francisco, I always browse photos to see if the ambiance is right for the occasion. With our
Business Photos
pilot, we’ve been photographing businesses, with their permission, to highlight the qualities that make their locations stand out. In addition to the photos that business owners can upload directly through
Google Places
, these photos help potential customers get a better view of the decor, merchandise, food, and more on each business’
Place page
.
Gruhn Guitars Inc.
in Nashville, Tennessee, United States
We’ve also been taking 360-degree photography to help businesses owners showcase their locations further, and starting today you can experience that panoramic perspective for select businesses in the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
This experience, using Street View technology, includes 360-degree imagery of the business interior and storefront. With this immersive imagery, potential customers can easily imagine themselves at the business and decide if they want to visit in person.
Tenkai
, Kyoto, Japan
We’re now starting to make these images available through the Place pages of select businesses we’ve photographed. When 360-degree imagery of a business is available, you’ll see an arrow appear over the thumbnail Street View image on that business’ Place page. Press the arrow to preview the storefront or interior, then click on the thumbnail to see the image in Street View.
Storefront thumbnail for
Susan Avery Flowers and Event Styling
in Australia
With this pilot, you'll begin to see additional photo experiences on the Place pages of a growing number of businesses. As additional imagery becomes available for more locations in the coming months, you’ll also be able to enter the interior perspective of businesses directly from the Street View images of nearby roads on Google Maps.
We’re continuing this program with businesses in select cities in the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, UK, South Korea, and France. If you would like to highlight your business to Google Maps users, please visit the
Business Photos site
to learn more and apply.
Posted by Gadi Royz, Product Manager, Google Maps
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