Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive street views (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for travel on foot, by car, by bike, by air (in beta), and by public transportation. As of 2020, over a billion people around the world used Google Maps every month.[1]Page type.
Web mapping
Available in
Multilingual
Owner
Commercial
Yes
Registration
Optional, part of Google Account
Launched
February 8, 2005; 18 years ago
Current status
Active
Registered in
C++ (back-end), JavaScript, XML, Ajax (U
Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was bought by Google, which turned it into a web application. Following further acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a real-time traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005.[2] The front end of the service uses JavaScript, XML and Ajax. Google Maps offers an API that allows embedding of maps on third-party websites[3] and offers a locator for businesses and other organizations in many countries around the world. Google Map Maker allowed users to collaboratively expand and update the service's mapping around the world, but it was discontinued as of March 2017. However, crowdsourced contributions to Google Maps have not ended, as the company has announced that these features will be transferred to the Google Local Guides program.[4]
The Google Maps satellite view is a "top down" or bird's eye view; most high-resolution images of cities are aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at an altitude of 800 to 1,500 feet (240 to 460 m), while most other images are from satellites.[5] Much of the available satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is regularly updated, according to a 2011 report.[6] Google Maps previously used a variant of the Mercator projection and therefore could not accurately display the regions around the poles.[7] In August 2018, the desktop version of Google Maps was updated to display a 3D globe. It is still possible to switch back to the 2D map in the settings.
Google Maps for Android and iOS devices was released in September 2008 and includes turn-by-turn GPS navigation along with dedicated parking assist features. In 2013, it was found to be the most popular smartphone app worldwide, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it.[8] In 2017, the app had two billion users on Android, along with several other Google services including YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, Search, and Google Play.
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