Google Maps is the reference application for satellite navigation in vehicles or on foot, but it still has a lot of room for improvement.
Google Maps has been, since its inception in 2005, one of Google’s most important projects. Map all land routes on the planet It was an almost impossible mission, but in the company it seems that they did not think the same. In Spain, and in other countries, this application has become the one used, de facto, on any trip, although Google wants Maps to be much more than a GPS navigation app.
This application, in addition to guiding us with real-time traffic on the roads of our city or knowing the best way to get to another destination, also serves as a kind of Yellow Pages. Every self-respecting business must be in this application, being a fairly common way to search for telephone numbers, web addresses, postal locations, etc.
However, it is not perfect. Google Maps has some bugs, such as the update speed on roads when there are works that change certain lanes, when a street changes the direction of traffic, etc. Additionally, there are features that could be added to offer a better experience, some of which are already in competing applications.
traffic cameras
Traffic, like many other areas, has been computerized at high speed for decades now. There are more and more radars, but there are also more surveillance cameras in cities, for example to control access to the Low Emission Zones (ZBE) that many municipalities must have.
There are many web portals, and some applications, such as Bing Maps, that allow access to those traffic cameras that are only used to see congestion on the main roads, and it would be very practical to have that integrated into the Google Maps application itself. . In this way, the traffic could be seen in real time.
This would be a great complement to the colored routes the app already has, which give an idea of ​​whether there is a lot of traffic or not, but which take a few minutes to update, just long enough to make a bad decision about how to get somewhere. . With cameras that would not be the case, since they are seen almost live.
Traffic lights on route
In one of the summer 2021 updates, Google included traffic lights in many locations in Google Maps. In this way, it was possible to know if there were many traffic lights on a street or not, being able to choose one route or another.
What Google Maps does not yet do is indicate the number of traffic lights on the different routes it suggests to get to a place. It is something that Petal Maps, Huawei’s navigation app, has recently included, which allows you to choose which route is best if the number of traffic lights is key.
Immersive view
One of the most striking functions added to Google Maps in recent years is Immersive View. This function allows you to view cities in 3D with a background that changes in real time and shows the weather of the cities. It is very similar to Apple’s FlyOver.
The problem is that the spread of this function is very limited, and it is not that it is not in towns and small towns, it is that there are cities with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants in many countries that do not yet have it active. It is true that it is more aesthetic than functional, but Google still has the resources to accelerate this implementation. For example, using the same technology that you have in Google Earth.
Weather details
Google has a fairly acceptable weather application, and its results are even integrated into Google when asking about the weather within the search engine. That’s why it was surreal that that same information was not used within Google Maps. Knowing the weather in certain places is important if you are going there.
A few weeks ago it was announced that Google was going to add a new button with the weather in a location when searching on Google Maps. It was something that had been on iOS for a while but had not made the leap to Android. The problem is that this function is not expanding to all users, or at least not at the speed that would be desirable.
car chargers
Electric cars are increasingly popular in Spain, and Google already includes many of the electric stations on its maps. In them you can see the company that operates it, the charging points, the power, etc. But they are missing a key function, that of being able to know if they are busy or not.
Unlike what happens at gas stations, the companies that operate these chargers know at all times which positions are occupied, and they show it in their applications. If Google could show the free stations in an area, it would be much more convenient to use this app as an application to find where to recharge the car.
Best road symbols
The last of the improvements that could be implemented in Google Maps are those related to the signs on the roads. Apple Maps has shown how roads, zebra crossings, parking lots and other elements can be shown in certain cities, and, the truth is, they are much more spectacular and accurate than Google’s.
Google could create a mixed layer between the satellite view and the simplified view, something that would bring the quality closer to what Apple offers. This would also be viable simply using the aerial images you already have, but with much greater clarity as it becomes a vector map, not images.
