Home News Google Map Maker lets users, err, make maps!

Google Map Maker lets users, err, make maps!

768
0
bletchley before after
bletchley before after

Google Maps has been the gold standard when it comes to online maps for years. But the firm has now opened the doors to the general public to add features it may have missed.

The company has extended the reach of its Map Maker tool so that people with local knowledge can add to the overall accuracy of the Google Maps service.

Pointing your browser at google.com/mapmaker, a user can add favourite shopping locations, natural beauty sports or even town and village boundaries.

Of course, Google won’t allow changes to become live there and then. A crack team of people will vet additions before making them live. How they will vet these is anyone’s guess! Other users will also have a chance to see the additions and offer feedback on them to improve the accuracy.

Satish Mavuri, Program Manager wrote on Google’s Lat Long blog that  “Google invites Brits to share and update Google Maps by using their local knowledge and credible local expertise, by helping to update their favourite shops in London’s Soho Square, or Corfe Castle, improve driving directions to St Ives in Cornwall, drawing from their knowledge about world-famous tourist destinations or useful updates of the streets of their hometown.”|

“Google Map Maker will make the maps of the UK more comprehensive and accurate than ever before,” said Mavuri.

The tool was launched at Bletchley Park with a MapUp workshop where participants made a more detailed map of the WWII codebreaker site.

Google’s Map Maker was launched in 2008 as a way for users living in smaller nations to map out their homeland where mapping data wasn’t available. Google is asking people with knowledge of particular UK locations to join Map Maker and engage with the community.