Google Maps, Local Expand To UK

Koushiro writes "From Google's official blog comes word that Google Maps UK and Google Local UK have been launched, confirming speculations that the search engine giant would continue to expand its regional services to an international audience. The seemingly logical next step, of course, would be to expand coverage to Western Europe, but given the input Google's UK office had into this project, can we expect Google Maps India next?"

Interested to see if they are coming to Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

To the best of my knowledge there are no publically available sources of free mapping or imaging data of Germany. It will be interesting to see what data Google will use if and when they offer the maps service here. There are certainly other free routing/mapping services, but there is no such thing as the free USGS data sets.

Re:OK, I'm impressed.

[antdude]

Are those colored freeways for traffic speed status? I have never seen those in U.S. maps especially in Southern CA area.

Google Maps India a distant dream

[cOdEgUru]

Not due to the lack of attempt, just that mostly directions meant (when I was growing up) was : "Go Straight for two kilometres, turn right at the Junction with the Statue and then one mile ahead take a left by the Cricket Stadium". Not something you want to pull up on Google!

In the Rural areas of the country and even in the suburbs of some major metropolitan areas, the above method will apply.

Rarely are there Street names. But it doesnt really matter as men arent embarassed to ask for directions :)

Re:Australia next please !

[imroy]

Bah, with our small population in relation to our large size we'll probably be the last continent to be covered by Google maps/local. I'd expect western Europe and/or southeast Asia to be covered next. Lots more people there. Even parts of Africa and South America might be covered before us.

Stripped-down mapping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a geographer/cartographer, I've found Google Maps exceedingly useful. But a few things to note, applying both to the UK and the US sites.

--Data resolution is far from uniform. We see every little street in central London, but go to northern Scotland and only (relatively) major roads show up.

--The engine is less than wonderful when it comes to choosing the most important towns to identify on the maps at various scales. The base view identifies the Edinburgh neighborhood of Dunfermline, rather than the greater (and more recognizable) conurbation. Similarly, I've found it awkward when looking around the US midwest--sometimes it seemed to display every place name *but* Peoria.

--In the US version at least, highway numbers seem to be displayed fully only at very high zooms. There could also be more distinction in road grades--currently the system distinguishes only freeways, state roads, and everything else. This makes it a bit difficult to use the system for figuring out driving routes.

--Could do better at showing non-road things: rivers, neighborhoods, etc.

All in all, the search feature and seemless panning are excellent, but the maps generated are a bit too stripped-down for my tastes.

Re:Where's Edinburgh?

[willm5]

The label for Dunfermline obscures the label for Edinburgh on the zoomed out view. It is actualy there if you zoom in a bit..

Looks like UK satellite views soon too...

[Aphrika]

If you go to the maps.google.com [google.com], zoom right out and switch to satellite view, you can scroll over to the right where the UK is and hey presto satellite views!

It's not complete yet and only zooms halfway in before you're notified it's incomplete, but it should definitely be something to look forward to.

Re:If you scroll over....

[wowbagger]

Ehhh, not quite.

All the mapping programs I've worked with treat ferry routes "like a road" - they have the ferry route in the database just as they would a road, and they just have a flag that says "This is a ferry route".

I have yet to see a routing program that knew of the schedule of the ferry and would then say "At this point, wait 6.3 hours for the ferry to arrive".

The problem with extending this to the airlines would be the time dependence of the different routes. While it does not matter WHEN I arrive at the junction of I-35 and I-40 (I-40 will still be there and still be available), if my plane arrives 1 hour too late, the next plane will be gone, and the route will be invalidated.

And then there is the fact that the "cost" of taking a given road is pretty easily computed - take the length of the road, multiply by an estimated speed for that type of road - done. Now, try to compute the "cost" of a flight - is that super-duper-mega-saver-standby, or "I need to fly out TONIGHT" pay through the nose?

Having a routing program that takes into account the different costs of air travel - especially when you remove the constraints on city of departure and arrival - you'd get into a VERY nasty bit of design. Consider: is it faster/cheaper to drive to Wichita, get a plane to Dallas, get a plane to LA, drive to Acton, or is it cheaper to fly into Burbank, or into Flagstaff, or to drive to OKC and fly out, or to KCI, or to Salina, or.... - and each of those choices imposes time constraints on the connections.

I won't speculate on the P/NP completeness of the problem, and I won't say that it COULDN'T be solved electronically, but I think you'd still be better planning the air part of the trips with a dedicated tool and much input from the user, then planning the road trip side of things with a map program.

Re:Unusual Projections

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

And when the user zooms out to see the whole of Europe?

something I wish google maps US had..

[rogueuk]

it's nice that in london [google.co.uk], it shows the tube stations right on the map.

It doesn't do this for the metro, in DC [google.com] for instance. That would definitely be a useful feature to have when planning trips and the like

Re:Poor routing

[cybergibbons]

I presume your at Imperial College... but that's not the point.

That motorway based route would not only be faster when there is no traffic (which is what most route finders assume), but it is a hell of a lot more simple. Simplicity is really important when your driving a route for the first time in London...

From memory...

[aug24]

The OS here (whom I worked for till last September or so) use a double-orthogonal approach. That is, they flatten left and right sides of the country relative to their respective centre lines, then marry the two images. This makes measurement errors smaller.

International maps tend to use a simple Mercator projection.

Someone from the OS will hopefully be along shortly to correct my terminology... Nigel T? Dave R? Are you reading?

Justin.

Re:Google Maps India a distant dream

[swiftstream]

It is like this in other places, as well--or even worse! I lived in Nicaragua for three years, and in the capital they gave directions by referring to places that had been destroyed thirty years earlier, in the earthquake of '72!

"What? The American school? Oh, right, it's right behind [such and such building]"

"Where's that?"

"Uh, well, it got destroyed in the earthquake, but if you drive three blocks east toward the lake, then turn south..."

Google owns a satellite

[BobPaul]

I know people would say that Google can just buy satellite images from an independent source

Not that it changes your post much, but Google's aquisition of KeyHole netted them a satellite or two.

You can find out more on the Keyhole.com website under What are Google's Plans with KeyHole [keyhole.com]

Interestingly enough, if you try to select "India" from the drop down, you'll find it isn't there. Google has no plans for posting satellite images of India beyond the 1km resolution they plan to do the entire world using.

Re:Bloody Hell!!!

[virid]

Public transportation is a viable option in NYC as opposed to other parts of the country. So the New Yorkers care, at least.

I never realized Yahoo Maps had the public transportation option, which is cool. I agree, having the different line options on the map is critical information.

Re:Not only the UK

[seanieb]

Your so wrong, "England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are not countries but the United Kingdom is."

England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are countries but the United Kingdom is a Kingdom. Look at the Rugby, soccer .... Any sports? They even have their own type of money bills.

I really find it offensive that we (the Irish) can only get to our google maps via .co.uk and maps.google.ie does not work. We've worked and fought for our independence. Now give us a separate google maps. If this isn't possible please remove the Republic of Ireland from "UK MAPS" as we are not part of the UK and will never be.

Re:Unusual Projections

[redbaron7]

It is worse than that. It looks like their postcode database was in OS GR coordinates (good), which they converted to lat,long; but used the new coords as if they are WGS84 and not Airy36. This results in errors of a few hundred metres. I've mailed them point out the error.