Google is rolling out some new Maps features to its iOS and Android apps this summer, including new location-sharing options, improved cycling directions and photo-realistic aerial views of famous landmarks around the world. city
First, share your location. Google says it wants to make it easier to see when someone who’s shared their location arrives or leaves a location, “so you can more easily coordinate schedules” and meetings. To that end, it’s introducing location-sharing notifications, which work similarly to the equivalent feature in Apple’s Find My app.
Google offers the following use case:
Say you’re going to a concert with a group of friends. If they’ve already chosen to share their location with you, you can set a notification for the address of the concert venue so you can see when they’ve arrived and find you quickly. You can also set up a notification to see when they’ve left the site, in case you get separated.
Google says it built the feature with privacy in mind, which is why notifications can only be set up for someone who’s already chosen to share their location with you. In addition, that person will receive multiple reminders to let them know that they are sharing their location, in the form of push notifications and recurring monthly emails, and users can stop sharing their location at any time.
Google then adds more granular information to cycling directions in the 100+ cities where they’re available, such as whether a particular route involves a major or secondary road, whether the suggested route includes stairs or steep hills, and when you should be prepared to encounter heavy traffic.
Finally, Google offers photorealistic aerial views of “nearly 100 of the world’s most popular landmarks” in cities like Barcelona, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. Google says the aerial views are a “first step” in integrating its immersive visualization feature for cities that the company previewed in May and is slated to roll out later this year.
Google says aerial views of landmarks and location sharing notifications are now rolling out worldwide to Google Maps on Android and iOS, and bike route information will roll out in the coming weeks to the cities where there are directions for cycling.