Google Maps Navigation takes a mobile turn
Don't try this on game day, but the new Google Maps Navigation application will show you how to take a spin past Boston's Fenway Park.
(Credit: Google)
You can almost hear the portable navigation industry swearing already.
Google is announcing plans Wednesday to release a new Android application called Google Maps Navigation. When combined with a GPS-equipped mobile phone running Android 2.0, it provides turn-by-turn directions powered by Google Maps and a slick user interface that combines features such as voice recognition and Google Street View. Google Maps Navigation, like seemingly everything that emerges from Google, will be free.
"Mobile platforms--Android and others--are so powerful now that you can build client apps that can do magical things connected to the cloud," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a briefing for reporters at Google's headquarters on Tuesday.
The standard Google Maps Navigation view.
(Credit: Google)Companies in the cell phone navigation industry have seen this day coming for quite some time. Right now, the beta application only works on phones that will use the Android 2.0 software, which is scheduled to be available very soon with the expected arrival of Motorola's Droid phone on Verizon's network.
Google's Vic Gundotra appeared to demonstrate the application on the Droid: he wouldn't confirm it, but it was a shiny black Android 2.0 phone running on Verizon's network and bearing Motorola's stamp, so we're probably not going too far out on a limb here. (Update, 7:24 a.m. PDT: Says Google's Wednesday morning press release: "The first phone to have Google Maps Navigation and Android 2.0 is the Droid from Verizon.")
However, Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone, and it's not ruling out licensing the software to makers of portable navigation devices used in cars throughout the world, said Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google for mobile and developers. The process involving Apple is slightly different from the usual App Store submission process, because Maps is a built-in iPhone application, he said.
The application works like any navigation system that you may have used, but it combines Google Search and Google Maps functions that are normally only available on the desktop and brings them to the smartphone. Perhaps the most interesting and useful feature comes from Google Street View, allowing Google to provide a Street View image at every turn that the application suggests during your journey.
As with other navigation applications, users can search for gas stations or restaurants along the way, and get real-time traffic information. Google also developed a unique "arms-length" user interface that automatically pops up when the software detects that it has been placed into a dashboard holder, with bigger buttons and links to voice controls front and center.
Obviously, Google is not the first to offer a combination of turn-by-turn maps and Web services. Many different smartphone applications provide this type of navigation service, and companies like Garmin and TomTom are also working to embed Web-delivered data into their on-dash and built-in navigation systems.
But the price for Google Maps Navigation--free--will be tough to beat. Expect to see ads pop up at a later date, although they won't be present at launch.
Google doesn't plan to open-source the application but does plan to make it free on Android 2.0 phones, and implied that the application would be free for other partners as they cut deals to use the application. That could dramatically reduce the cost of developing navigation services, undercutting the established industry with a product that consumers already know very well: there are 50 million active users of Google Mobile Maps, Gundotra said.
Google is not sure whether Google Maps Navigation will work on older Android phones that will get upgraded to Android 2.0. That depends on the carrier and phone maker, Gundotra said.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
k thx bye
The GPS costs Verizon nothing (since the consumer pays for it) and the maps are the same. Stored on the GPS (or smartphone). The only thing there really is to pay for is updates to the maps. That Verizon even charges a monthy fee above the purchase price was just gravy for them. They can affod to "give away" free GPS since the customer already paid for it.
Unless you are always downloading maps as you go with little local storage there is no reason to have a monthly fee of any kind. If you download as you go...that's what the data plan is for.
RUN ! from ATT/iPhone ; )
k thx bye
Still cheaper than paying for the carrier's streaming GPS service.
The other GPS makers don't leave you high an dry in those cases, and that alone can make their software worth the money..
Thanks for the clarifiation that what Verizon/Google etc. offer is "cloud" maps.
I have a handlebar holder for my G1 on my bike, so I think this will be good for biking, but, it wont be my primary means of navigation in the car...For the following reasons:
1)what if I dont have a cell signal?
2)I live in Germany, does it work in Germany?
3) what if a call comes in? Then I have the choice of seeing where to go, or talk on the phone?
4)Google is SERIOUSLY watching everything thing that we do...from browsing (Chrome), to emailing (Gmail), and now they will see everywhere we go??? Its good if I get kidnapped, but I dont usually like having someone watch over me.
If Google can feed ads for businesses along the route, it may just be the first pop up ads that I welcome seeing.
A phone app is great for rare occasions but for day to day use it is not anywhere near as practical as a dedicated unit. Can you swap it from car to car so your spouse or kids can use it? Can you lend it to that neighbor that always borrows all your stuff we he goes camping with your tent and cook stove? It is not a practical thing in many situations. And nobody with any sense would go out and purchase new hones for everyone in the house that might use this, with their contracts and all, just for this feature.
Also, despite everyone gushing over Google! bringing this to the market, I purchased my unit and the phone app because i travel most of the time during the week and I used to just use Maps to get directions for the next day at whatever hotel i was staying at. Maps has to be one of the worst at giving good directions. I can't count the number of times it has sent me to the wrong location. I've had it send me to the wrong city in a state despite typing in the whole address, zip code included. If you travel around allot through a five state area like I do Maps is almost useless. It has given me so many bogus directions that I can no longer trust it for business purposes.
As far as the neighbor goes, tell 'im he can have yer wife, and she has the phone.
BTW they all have phones already and neither of them want anything to do with this phone as it is a large brick. They both think my Omnia is too big as it is and this Droid is even bigger.
Switch to Android maybe... but switching to WinMo after using the iPhone ... seriously???
I don't have stats but there are probably as many apps for WinMo as there are for iphone. Think about it. people have been developing Winmo apps since 2002. The problem is they are hard to find. Every developer keeps his own site. it's like a big scavenger hunt.
Namely, the G1
If it can work with no data coverage, they would have SPECIFICALLY SAID SO!
I would still get it anyway since it's free and the online searching would be useful whenever a good data service signal is available. However, I would need to keep a real PND in the glove box for emergency use when the data coverage is not available or when there there is a Google outage.
- by ArtInvent October 28, 2009 10:44 AM PDT
- Frankly, this just murders any other nav service I've ever seen, because it will undoubtedly integrate with all your Google accounts, contacts, custom maps, etc. I use Gmail on my computer, and when someone sends me an address in an email, I see a little window offering to map that in Google Maps. To just effortlessly link that to the Nav function, overlay Street View, Satellite view - voice search! - I mean, wow. That is convergence. It would be worth paying a lot more for that than for a Garmin or TomTom standalone system - and it's free? Dang. DAAAAAANG.
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- by Renegade Knight October 28, 2009 1:37 PM PDT
- Meh, I don't use google anything except search. If I get this phone I'd have a bunch of google apps. If the have an open app store I can replace those anyway.
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- by chrisx1 October 28, 2009 3:22 PM PDT
- Calm down. It is just a data dependent streaming service, plus you have all the limitations of trying to multitask phone calls and navigation on a cell phone. Limitations of the hardware, phone OS and carrier network limitations. It may have bugs and growing pains on release.
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (92 Comments)I'm very worried: Google is absolutely going to take over.
Rein in your expectations and hyperbole.
It's great that's it's free for now.