How Google Builds Its Maps
Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 2:00AM Always good to know the process behind the service we use.
From The Atlantic- "Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that's the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you're drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B -- and last week, Google showed me the internal map and demonstrated how it was built. It's the first time the company has let anyone watch how the project it calls GT, or "Ground Truth," actually works.
Google opened up at a key moment in its evolution. The company began as an online search company that made money almost exclusively from selling ads based on what you were querying for. But then the mobile world exploded. Where you're searching from has become almost as important as what you're searching for. Google responded by creating an operating system, brand, and ecosystem in Android that has become the only significant rival to Apple's iOS."
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Reader Comments (3)
I have used Google Maps more frequently, now that the offline maps function is better implemented, but there are still some bug-bears that stop me from using it all the time.
1. To plan a route, or in motion re-routing, it still runs home to Google to fetch the route plan, so when the internet is unavailable, it gets lobotomised.
2. Most annoyingly, it appears that every time it is upgraded with even minor revisions, the upgrade process invalidates the current offline maps, and you have to re-download them again. And even through you get the option to re-download a map, it sometimes doesn't work.
It must be a general failing of companies with their faith in online accessibility, it's not always there, and that cripples the functionality.
Just ask Siri, oh wait, you can't; she's lobotomised too...
I used the offline caching when I was in Salzburg a couple of weeks ago. I had no data connection, just wi-fi when I was back at the apartment.
It worked well as far as it went but it's clearly a work-in-progress. For example they need to also cache commonly-requested data such as restaurants.
One thing that's rather silly is that you can't switch from satellite view back to map view without a data connection, even though the map view data is cached. I left the apartment in satellite view and was stuck in it all day.
It's overwhelming just to imagine the steps needed to put this service up. Google in fact excels in this field. I'm absolutely amazed at the level of services available by Google.
My wife is an artist and she uses a lot the Google's museum art gallery and I took the opportunity to see how they do it - it's just superb! The pictures and the zoom you can do is greater than if you were before the painting yourself. You can actually see the underneath layer of the canvas with all those oil brushing textures popping out.