Google is celebrating the 15th birthday of its Maps service and in today’s blog post, it has announced a number of changes that come our way as the service turns 15.
Google Maps was launched in 2005, even before Android made an appearance in the market. One of the major selling features of Android was that it came with a free turn-by-turn navigation system.
The changes made in Google Map’s application are:
Logo
Google has revamped the Google Maps logo. The latest logo has a thumb-pin sign divided into five colors against a white background. The evolution of the Google Maps logo is clearly depicted in the following video.
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Menu
Ditching the hamburger menu, Google Maps will now come with more tabs at the bottom. Previously, there were only three, with the addition of two new tabs, we have a total of five tabs now. These are:
- Explore: this tab allows users to look for new places in their immediate vicinity.
- Commute: users can look for the best way to commute via this tab.
- Saved: any and every saved place for upcoming plans and trips will populate this tab.
- Contribute: this tab will provide a space for leaving reviews of places users have visited.
- Updates: all the trending places in the user’s locality will be displayed under this tab.
Transit features
The highlight of this new Google Map update is the upgraded transit feature. On top of the live arrival times and crowdedness predictions, Google Maps will now allow users to see the temperature in advance to plan their trips. Apart from this, a new accessibility feature is also added that lets users find out the public transport stations that have accessible entrances for disabled passengers. For specific regions, it also shows whether there is a women’s section or not. An added security feature allows users to find out the areas that are monitored by security cameras as well.
