Google went all out with its exciting new offerings at this year’s Google I/O. On its first day, the annual developer conference of the company highlighted innovations to their apps and focused on heightened user-device interaction. The goal is further improving on the apps’ convenience and functionality. This is most obvious in the newest updates for Google Maps.
Powered by AI tools, Google Maps has now reached a new level of personalized functions with new features that focus on exploration, recommendations, and group planning.
“Today, our users aren’t just asking for the fastest route to a place but also what’s happening around them, what the new places are, and what the locals are doing in their neighborhood,” said Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s vice president for engineering and product management.
The “For You” tab is the app’s version of a news feed that contains recommendations for you. The new function now lets you subscribe to places, cities, neighborhoods, and cities, and provide you with updates. Additionally, the For You feed includes analysis of local news articles and AI-powered exploration features like generating lists of popular places you could go to—all specified to your preferences.
“Your Match” is another new feature that provides you not just with information but also a personalized score in terms of how restaurant caters to your preferences. Your preferences are acquired and analyzed by Google Maps based on how you rate other places or through your manual submission of them.
There is also the new group planning feature. It lets you list your suggested places for group outings or any other plans, then Google Maps will keep tabs with you as you navigate other places for your list. And when you share the list to your friends, they can vote for the ones they like.
These updates will be available later this summer, both on iOS and Android, and only through the app and not the web, as of the announcement.
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