Only a handful of applications from companies, have developed as much as google maps has over the years. After it’s initial launch in 2005, it was a moderately better alternative to AOL’s MapQuest. With the rise of many dependent technologies, google maps has really become essential to the lives of many people. Over the years, it has improved drastically, so much so that now it accurately calculates the time it will take you to get to any chosen destination, be it on foot or in an automobile, offering advice about when to change lanes and even rerouting you to avoid traffic. Today marks the 15th anniversary of Google Maps.
Looking at how well they’re performing in recent times it is understandable that google would want to celebrate it success. The company marked the occasion with a lightly refreshed design, including a good-looking new pin-shaped logo.
According to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, the future of Google Maps is one in which algorithms are drawing buildings, AR(Augmented reality) is helping you decide what to eat, and Google Maps technology exists more broadly outside of the actual Google Maps app.
That does not mean that AR on Google Maps works like magic now, or will do so in the near future. “We talk about AR’s double-edged sword,” says Alex Komoroske, director of product management at Maps. “If it does exactly right, it is extremely intuitive. But if we are wrong, it is actively confusing. It is worse than not showing anything.”
Clearview AI is an American technology company that provides facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies. The company has developed technology that can match faces to a database of more than three billion images scraped from the Internet. Google implementing Clearview AI implies that it can immediately associate any face with a name as opposed to Street View that offers you a view of an address you can visit yourself, and critically allow homeowners to opt out of the program, blurring the view of their houses.
