A major redesign has been launched for Google Maps as the technology giant celebrates the 15th birthday of its hugely-popular mapping service.
The redesigned app available for Android and iOS includes a new logo and is easier to use thanks to the addition of a more comprehensive lower tab that houses three new buttons dubbed ‘Saved,’ ‘Contribute,’ and ‘Updates.’ These buttons join the familiar ‘Commute’ and ‘Explore’ buttons, all organized into five tabs at the bottom of the app screen.
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Here’s what these functions do:
Explore: Provides information, ratings, and reviews and more for about 200 million places around the world, including restaurants, attractions, and city landmarks.
Commute: Gives real-time traffic updates, travel times, and provide suggestions for alternative routes to make sure you’re on the most efficient route for your commute.
Saved: Allows you to easily view all your saved spots in one place as well as find and organize plans for an upcoming trip and share recommendations based on places you’ve been.
Contribute: This lets users share local information likes details about roads and addresses, missing places, business reviews, and photos.
Updates: It provides a feed of trending, must-see spots from local experts and publishers. Along with discovering, saving and sharing recommendations with your network, you can also directly chat with businesses to get your questions answered.
A host of other updates for Google Maps are in the works with a particular focus on public transport. For example, users will soon be able to check in advance the temperature inside a train, determine whether there is good accessibility in public transit lines, if there is security monitoring on board, and in countries such as Japan, see whether a train has a women’s only section and just how many carriages may be available.