The official blog for Google Maps
Making of Maps: Ground Truth glue
September 9, 2014
The final post in our Making of Maps series shows you how Ground Truth brings all the pieces of Google Maps together. Catch up on posts
1
,
2
, &
3
for more info! — Ed.
Henman Hill
or
Murray Mound
? For years, British tennis fans have argued over the proper name for this hill near Wimbledon. Recently, this quirky
debate
over naming rights made its way to Google Maps, as people used our
Map Maker tool
to wrestle over the knoll’s identity. Never fear, tennis fans: whichever name you prefer, you’ll be sent to the right
location
when you look it up on Google Maps—let’s call it deuce.
Making sure you get to the right place, no matter what name you know it by, is just the sort of thing our Ground Truth team handles every day. Ground Truth’s aim is to keep Google Maps as up to date and accurate as possible, whether that means considering user reports from
Map Maker
and
Report a Problem
or proactively looking for new changes ourselves. Every day we start by scoping out what’s happening in the world—and by using algorithms and a little elbow grease, we can identify what roads will close for
Labor Day
, what housing developments are opening in
Texas
, and which street names are changing in Denmark (note: there are
a lot
of them). Ground Truth gives us the ability to use all this information to shape the map—so we can include colloquial street names, newly opened businesses, and even indoor floor plans.
All the streets in
Sondergarden, Denmark
were renamed this year as part of a country-wide
initiative
to make addresses easier to understand
Another way Ground Truth keeps Google Maps accurate is through imagery; and if a picture is worth a thousand words, you can imagine how useful satellite, aerial, and Street View imagery imagery can be. With a bird’s-eye view, we can trace the roads running through a town or identify bodies of water and park boundaries throughout a region. (One of my favorite projects is using satellite images to add
golf courses
to the map, including green spaces, trails, and each hole on the course.)
Satellite and aerial images are used to trace roads, bodies of water, and more (
St. Petersburg, Russia
)
With Street View, we can also add the granular detail needed to give you good directions. Intersections become easy to navigate because we can tell which direction each lane will take you; points of interest are easy to find because we can add information that can only be seen from the street, like the name of a restaurant or building address. Combine this with the fact that our Street View cars are designed to pinpoint exactly where each photo was taken, and the map starts to look like a mirror of the real world.
Street View images can help pinpoint businesses and determine lane directions (
Brașov, Romania
)
Ground Truth takes information from thousands of sources—governments, imagery, organizations, individuals—and makes it into one cohesive map. But the best part of putting together this giant puzzle is how it helps people every day. It can save you time, empower you to get things done, and give you the opportunity to travel and explore without worry. Reaching our
50th Ground Truth country
was an important moment for this project, but it’s far from the end. As long as the world keeps changing, we’ll keep mapping.
Posted by Nick Volmar, Program Manager & Ground Truth Operator
Making of Maps: The cornerstones
September 4, 2014
This is the second post in our
Making of Maps series
. Here you’ll get a glimpse of the information we use to build Google Maps from authoritative sources and our own mapping tools. —Ed.
With Google Maps by your side, you have a co-pilot for everything from turn-by-turn directions, to discovering new restaurants to deciding which hiking trails to climb next. This is possible in large part because Google Maps includes information from thousands of authoritative sources as varied as the
U.S. Geological Survey
, the
Ordnance Survey of Ireland
, and Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (
INEGI
). But even all this isn’t enough to build the most comprehensive map. To give you the highest quality results, we need to fill in details like the right place to turn on an unmarked road and indoor maps of your local museum.
Over the years, we’ve created new sources of information to fill in those details. In fact, one of the most important sources for Google Maps is our own Street View imagery. In addition to giving you a way to virtually explore the world, Street View has helped to improve the quality of what we call our “basemap.” With ground-level images, we can identify one-way roads, pinpoint addresses on the map, and verify street names. This added level of detail gives you better search results, more accurate directions, and smoother turn-by-turn navigation.
Adding and verifying street names and turn restrictions in
Taipei City, Taiwan
But Street View isn’t the only way we fill in details on Google Maps. Today, we’re releasing six indoor maps created with our new mapping tool called Cartographer. Cartographer is a backpack equipped with Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (
SLAM
) technology.
The Cartographer creates indoor floor plans on the fly
As the backpack-wearer walks through a building, SLAM technology generates the floor plan in real time and displays it on an Android tablet connected to the backpack’s computer. The wearer can then add points of interest on the go, such as a T-rex replica in a museum. As fast as you can walk, you can map with Cartographer—so you can create floor plans for a 39-story building, like the
San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel
, in just a few hours!
Deutsches Museum
in Germany
features aircrafts and helicopters in historic hangars
Projects like these make Google Maps unique. Our own mapping tools supplement the information from authoritative sources, making it easier for you to get where you need to go.
But the world is big and changes happen every day—businesses open and close, roads go under construction, and new parks are built. You know your neighborhood and what’s important to your local community better than anyone, which is why we created a tool called Map Maker that empowers anyone—from the avid mapper to the traveling businesswoman—to update the map as the world changes. Next up, we’ll talk to members of the
Map Maker
community to hear their stories. Until next time!
Posted by Sophia Lin, Product Manager, Ground Truth
Making of Maps: Reaching a milestone
September 3, 2014
This is the first in a series of posts taking you behind the scenes of how Google makes its Maps. —Ed.
When you head out your door, you’ve got directions in your pocket—whether you’re driving to your aunt’s place in the mountains, cycling to a new biergarten or taking the train downtown. For Google Maps to get you there, it needs to be a digital mirror of the real world. But the real world is always changing. So to make sure your map is an accurate reflection of your world, we started
Ground Truth
, a project that brings the freshest, most relevant information to Google Maps.
Today, we’ve reached our 50th
Ground Truth
country with the addition of five new countries: Taiwan, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, and the last regions of Russia. We’re also rolling out
Google Map Maker
and
Report a Problem
—our crowdsourcing map tools—to Taiwan, Russia and Malaysia, giving anyone in those countries the ability to share and contribute their local knowledge directly to Google Maps.
Drive over Malaysia’s new Penang Second Bridge
For these countries, that means clearer, more detailed depictions of points of interest like walking paths in parks or department lables in universities, a reworking of the road network with new street names and turn restrictions, and faster updates to the map. In the unique case of Poland and Romania, both of which have Map Maker communities that were instrumental in building the map from scratch, it also means providing more resources to bring the same level of map detail to all regions in these countries.
Explore the campus of National Taiwan University
Over the next week, we’re pulling back the curtain to show you how Ground Truth and Map Maker work together to build Google Maps. Much of the magic behind Maps comes from people—from the Googlers who spend hours perfecting every road in the world, to the users who come together to improve the quality of maps in their local communities. To build the map, we have to gather high-quality information; in the next post, we’ll show you what that process looks like—and show off a new mapping technology. Stay tuned!
Posted by Manik Gupta, Group Product Manager, Google Maps
Building Better Maps in Brazil, Israel, and Russia
December 11, 2013
Whether you’re exploring new places or your own hometown, you want an up-to-date, accurate map that gets you where you want to go quickly and easily. That’s why we’re launching our
Ground Truth
initiative in Brazil, Israel, and additional parts of Russia (including Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, and Volgograd). With Ground Truth data, we can improve a country’s map faster so that it accurately reflects the ever-changing world.
The newest Ground Truth update also gives all three countries the option to add local knowledge to the map with the
Report a Problem tool
. We’ve also relaunched
Map Maker
in Brazil, so you can add and update geographic information for millions of users to see in Google Maps and Google Earth. Now, from the bustling markets of Manaus to the dazzling coastline of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian map enthusiasts can directly contribute their local expertise for all the world to see with
Google Map Maker
.
In the updated maps for Brazil, Israel, and Russia, you can easily distinguish areas of interest with crisper, colored depictions of water bodies and greenery. For example, you can quickly identify Copacabana beach on the map by its yellow coloring, making it easier to find nearby restaurants or streets to explore.
Discover restaurants along Brazil's Copacabana Beach
Updates to the maps’ road priorities, turn restrictions, street names, and interchange signs make navigating the roads more accurate and efficient. For example, in Israel we’ve updated the recently extended Highway 22, helping residents and visitors quickly arrive at their destinations.
Navigate Israel's updated Highway 22
Easily identify points of interest, like national parks, hospitals, and universities, with improved highlighting and visual enhancements. In Israel, Tel Aviv University now shows detailed walking paths, named roads, building department labels, and even designated grounds for the sculpture garden and swimming pools.
Explore the grounds of Israel's Tel Aviv University
More than 20 additional Russian regions will also see a more detailed map with this update. By highlighting major roads, greenery, and extensive networks of water bodies, the map now accurately displays the richness of localities like Kaliningrad.
Uncover the richness of Russia's Kliningrad
With visually clearer and increasingly detailed Google Maps, exploring the breathtaking streets of Old Jerusalem or traversing the lush Amazon rainforest is just a click away.
Sophia Lin, Product Manager, Google Maps
Building Better Maps in Southeast Asia
April 24, 2013
Have you ever found yourself standing on the western bank of the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok, looking for a way to get across to the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha? Or perhaps you’ve spent time scouring a map of Jakarta to find Indonesia’s famous National Monument. In order to make it easier for locals and visitors alike to find what they need and get to where they want to go, today we are publishing more comprehensive and accurate maps for Thailand and Indonesia.
View Larger Map
These updated maps are part of a project called
Ground Truth
that began in 2008 as part of our ongoing quest to provide people everywhere with the most comprehensive and accurate maps. Through this project, we use high-quality map data from authoritative sources around the world and then apply a mix of advanced algorithms, supplemental data (including satellite, aerial and Street View imagery), and human input to help create a map that mirrors the real world as closely as possible.
For example, the updated map for Thailand now provides more comprehensive information about the Bangkok city center shown below. So next time you happen to find yourself needing to cross the Chao Phraya River, you’ll be able to see that many ferry routes across the river are now mapped in greater detail, with route names shown and piers clearly marked. You can also pinpoint nearby points of interest, such as the Grand Palace and other sites like Wat Pho (the Temple of the Reclining Buddha).
View Larger Map
We’ve also added many other kinds of new information to the map, including improved local-language labels and detailed coverage for prominent places like universities and hospitals. For example, the new map shows building outlines, department labels, and colored highlighting for campus grounds at the Gadjah Mada University, one of Indonesia’s largest universities.
View Larger Map
Today’s update also makes our maps more comprehensive by bringing more of Thailand and Indonesia’s natural geography online for everyone to see. The country of Indonesia spans more than 17,000 islands; with today’s update, many of these islands — including Komodo Island, home to some world-famous
dragons
— are appearing on Google Maps for the first time.
View Larger Map
Of course, the world is always changing, and we want Google Maps to change with it. If you happen to notice something on the map that needs updating, you can let us know by clicking the “
Report a problem
” link, which is visible today in the lower right corner of your screen when you’re browsing the map of Thailand or Indonesia. We’ll review your comments and make the appropriate changes to the map; you’ll often see the updates take effect within just a few minutes or hours of the time we verify your feedback!
Today’s updated maps are just another milestone on our never-ending journey to bring you the most accurate and comprehensive maps of the entire world. We hope Google Maps will help you explore your way through Bangkok, Bali, Bandung, and more!
Posted by Brian McClendon, VP Google Maps and Google Earth
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