Google I/O this year had the standard rapid-fire procession of updates and announcements – so much that we’re still sinking our teeth into them. One less-discussed development involves a staple of the local media & commerce ecosystem: mapping. Specifically, Google Maps is getting more immersive.
Google announced that it will now provide options for users to activate immersive animations at specific locations. The eventual goal is to engage in deeper ways with Google Maps after you get to your destination. This will involve overlaid animations that offer deeper context or history of a given landmark.
For example, one of the first experiences is a retrospective of the Eiffel Tower, with overlaid animations to simulate the landmark’s construction and early designs. This geo-anchored content is meant to add dimension to any place – starting with landmarks and education before expanding to everyday places.
That last part is where this technology migrates from toy to tool. The vision from Google is to allow users more visually-rich and intuitive ways to find out about a given place. Applied to SMBs, this has natural integrations with local listings, such as seeing business details, overlaid on storefronts themselves.
Getting Discovered
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Google continues to experiment with ways to make mapping and navigation more immersive. This latest update builds from those past efforts. For example, geo-anchored animations stem from Google’s Live View 3D navigation and overlaid wayfinding arrows.
These place-based activations also build from Google’s Geospatial API. Utilizing all the visual and positional data in Street View (more on that in a bit), this API lets developers build immersive experiences like those teased above. Google’s latest update makes them now discoverable directly in Google Maps.
That discoverability is important, as it’s how these immersive experiences can get more play. Though 3D mapping experiences seem like a no-brainer, the truth is that they’ve been slow to gain consumer traction. Consumer habits are hard to break, including the 2D ways we use local search and mapping.
From a user perspective, these 3D experiences will be displayed by an icon in the 2D mapping interface. So if there is an immersive animation available at a given location, Google will let you know that it’s there. Tapping on the icon then launches a guided experience to hold up your phone and get immersed.
Sweeten the Deal
As further background, all the above works because Google taps into some of the geo-spatial data that it’s been building for years. It’s one of the few companies on the planet that can do this, though Apple continues to develop similar immersive chops that stem from its ongoing efforts to evolve Apple Maps.
For example, as noted, Google Live View lets users navigate using 3-dimension arrows that guide them from a first-person perspective. It’s particularly useful to orient oneself when emerging from underground transit. Google has also added place-based info along the routes, such as storefronts.
To accomplish this, Google tapped into its vast knowledge graph including Street View data and Google Business Profiles. The former lets devices “localize” by matching what the camera sees with Street View imagery (Apple does something similar). The same tech lets it identify storefronts and points of interest.
With this underlying data set, Google decided that the technology deserves more play than its own apps and features like Google Live View. So the Geospatial API was born. This crowdsources innovation to developers. Now, planting their experiences right within Google Maps could sweeten the deal.
