Is Google Maps already too big and are the claims growing to an unhealthy level? In any case, there are some announcements that have since been implemented only partially or not at all. A year before this article, Google had promised or started to roll out major improvements to the map material for Maps.
Unfortunately, not as much has happened in the last 365 days as we had hoped for on the part of the users. Since then, only a few cities have benefited from the significantly better map material, which brings with it massive differences in the area of detail.
New “street-level details” are reserved for a few cities
But that’s the way it is sometimes with the big announcements. They will then be implemented either only partially, very late, or perhaps never. The representation of the map material, which has been rather rough up to now, should be changed significantly. Things had also happened in cities like London, New York and San Francisco, but the list of cities hasn’t grown since then.
Google says the following improvements can be expected as you zoom in on improved maps:
- Accurately scaled road widths
- Paths and stairways in parks
- sidewalks
- zebra crossing
- Medians and pedestrian islands
This is visible today in London, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo. Google shares this list on an official help page but hasn’t provided an update for many months. Which of course is a shame. We would like to know which cities will soon be able to benefit. Or has the project already fallen asleep?
Google Maps: Too many announcements to deliver them all?
Sometimes you don’t know exactly how a project is doing. Google also promised new levels for pollen count and weather last year. We’ve been looking forward to this for many months, but the necessary app update is nowhere in sight. Last December I wrote about 3 innovations that I am particularly looking forward to. Only one of these was recently rolled out. It sometimes seems that the Maps team wants to offer too much.