Google Maps celebrate its 15th birthday with a new look and several new features

Google is celebrating the 15th birthday of Google Maps with several new updates. First, Google Maps gets a new icon. Second, both Google Maps for Android and iOS will now feature five easy-to-access tabs: Explore, Commute, Saved, Contribute and Updates. Read about these tabs in detail below.

• Explore: Looking for a place nearby to grab lunch, enjoy live music or play arcade games? In the Explore tab, you’ll find information, ratings, reviews and more for about 200 million places around the world, including local restaurants, nearby attractions and city landmarks.
• Commute: Whether you’re traveling by car or public transit, the Commute tab is there to make sure you’re on the most efficient route. Set up your daily commute to get real-time traffic updates, travel times and suggestions for alternative routes.
• Saved: People have saved more than 6.5 billion places on Google Maps—from the new bakery across town to the famous restaurant on your upcoming vacation. Now you can view all of these spots in one convenient place, as well as find and organize plans for an upcoming trip and share recommendations based on places you’ve been.
• Contribute: Hundreds of millions of people each year contribute information that helps keep Google Maps up to date. With the new Contribute tab, you can easily share local knowledge, such as details about roads and addresses, missing places, business reviews and photos. Each contribution goes a long way in helping others learn about new places and decide what to do.
• Updates: The new Updates tab provides you with a feed of trending, must-see spots from local experts and publishers, like The Infatuation. In addition to discovering, saving and sharing recommendations with your network, you can also directly chat with businesses to get questions answered.

Last year, Google Maps introduced the ability to check the crowdedness of a transit route. This year, Google is adding several new insights such as temperature, no.of carriages and others about your transit route.

• Temperature: For a more comfortable ride, check in advance if the temperature is considered by past riders as on the colder or warmer side.
• Accessibility: If you have special needs or require additional support, you can identify public transit lines with staffed assistance, accessible entrance and seating, accessible stop-button or hi-visible LED.
• Women’s Section: In regions where transit systems have designated women’s sections or carriages, we’ll help surface this information along with whether other passengers abide by it.
• Security Onboard: Feel safer knowing if security monitoring is on board—whether that’s with a security guard present, installed security cameras or an available helpline.
• Number of carriages available: In Japan only, you can pick a route based on the number of carriages so that it increases your chances of getting a seat.

The above insights will be rolled out globally in March.

Google Maps is also introducing improved Live View feature that will soon help you get oriented in the right direction in new ways.

Source: Google