India, with all its unnamed and undistinguished labyrinth of roads, has finally found a red-caped rescuer – A renovated Google Maps feature, especially for Indian roads.
Google ushers in specific features on Google Maps to peg away at challenges and opportunities that Indian roads usually bare out.
In consonance with the report, Google Maps users in the country will get a two-wheeler map mode since about 70 per cent of registered vehicles are two-wheeler. This mode will enable users to use shortcuts which won’t be attainable to four-wheeler or heavier vehicles. Anal Ghosh, Program Manager of Google Maps India, states that two-wheeler mode also provides customized traffic estimations.
Mr. Ghosh further added that Google Maps isn’t confined to the idea of navigating from one point to the other. The revamped feature being built for India is solely aimed at addressing the challenges posed by Indian roads and how efficiently Google Maps can take over them, while making its feature more accurate and reliable.
An additional feature on Google Maps will provide information on train, metro as well as bus routes. The transit feature will show schedules for approximately 12,000 trains run by Indian Railways.
“We are working closely with the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. We have been working with them to add public toilets (on Google Maps) across different cities in the country,” – Anal Ghosh.
Google, in a close collaborative effort with the Government, has also taken the initiative of adding public toilet locations on its Maps. This will work quite efficiently in order to thwart menaces of public urination, eradicating the unacceptable hygiene instilled by the same.
The Former Google Map-India Relationship
Given the huge, untapped market – India – is maintained an ever-growing bond with Google Maps. But when it comes to strict business, the tables turn! India hasn’t yet been able to position itself as one gargantuan stream of revenue for Google, unlike many other countries. Hence, Google deploys resources where it can expect the more financial return, with a lesser focus on Indian landscape.
Before the announcement of the Indian-specific Map feature, Google was known to be somewhat western-focused. It expected streets to have names, unlike India which is very different. Vast numbers of undistinguished roads certainly posed a problem for Google and at the same time, to other world map databases.
Mapping India then was indeed a very big task.
Navigating Chaotic Indian Roads Made Easier!
Mapping an advanced city with avenues and alleys neatly arranged in grids, and not in maze certainly comes as a piece of cake. But taking India into consideration, well – It is a different story; way-ward story!
“While some addresses are well-defined by street names and house numbers that are easy to find, others can be long-winded and hard to locate. The other reality is that millions of people and places in India are hard to locate—especially those in remote areas.” – Google Maps
Internet search giant, Google rolled out new features to make traversing through Indian roads easier. Google, which previously made voice navigation available in Hindi, also rolled out six new local languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam, in the month of March.
Google has fastened its seatbelt earlier this year, wherein it ventured in to put in some order to all the chaos prevalent in the city streets. It generated unique-specific codes for places and incorporated the use of nearby landmarks to facilitate users to add address which wasn’t previously present on the Maps.
