The Google 'Map Maker' now in U.S.

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 19:16 IST
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Bangalore: Google's nifty mapping Web app, which was launched in 2008 and is available in 183 countries, is finally coming to the United States. Map Maker's entrance into the U.S. is just one side of the digital map revolution that Google has been fomenting. The Google Map Maker is an important addition to Google's mapping services in U.S. and could make for maps that are vastly more detailed and useful than they are currently. Google is bringing Map Maker to the U.S. with an emphasis on making the existing digital maps better and more detailed. Google produced the 'Map Maker' In order to bring high-quality digital maps to every corner of the globe. Any logged-in Google user can edit a map. Fully approved users will see their updates go live "in minutes," and see traffic direction use the updates shortly after that. Google has different levels of control for different regions of the world. The editing features will allow the addition of more commercial data (stores and other businesses locations) and highly specific street information that's currently missing, like temporary closures due to construction projects. The map maker is a crowd-sourced cartography project that allows users to fill in the blanks on Google?s digital atlas of the world. You can also go directly to Map Maker and try out the toolkit to see how easy it is to add details to Google?s maps. With a few clicks you can outline a building, trace a lake, suggest a jogging path, etc. Due to Google?s innovation in the U.S., there will be many trends followed, like the automated crowd-sourced enabled personalization, the expansion of digital maps into physical space and vice versa. Google Maps doesn't yet support stores or businesses layered on top of each other, even though his division also runs the Building Maker tool for Maps. 3D map support will come later.