New Delhi
Google on Thursday announced a slew of new features on Google Maps to woo users in India, especially with rising competition from homegrown challenger Ola Maps.
The new features include electric vehicle (EV) charging station information, flyover callouts and AI-driven routing capability to reduce narrow road usage for four-wheeler drivers, the company said.
“These new features reaffirm our commitment to making digital mapping even more helpful for users, businesses, developers, and society at large. We look forward to continuing our journey of innovation in India,” Miriam Daniel, Vice President, and General Manager, Google Maps, said.
The US-based tech giant recently decided to cut the pricing of Google Maps platform for developers by up to 70 per cent from August 1 in India, just weeks after Ola Founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal openly nudged Indian developers to shun Google Maps and offered them sweeteners like one-year free access to Ola Maps.
However, Google said that “it’s tempting to think that way, but we actually do not focus on competitors”. We’re very focused on making sure we’re serving our user base and our partner community, which is our developer partners. And, to be honest, we timed it with our IO Connect event in Bengaluru,” Daniel said.
Daniel said this was something that Google Maps’ partners have been requesting of for a while and the company has been working on it for quite some time to make sure its infrastructure, pricing systems are localised and adapted to the needs of its partners in India. The company announced six ways it is enabling more efficient and sustainable journeys on Google Maps in India, powered by AI and local partners.
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“These new features reaffirm our commitment to making digital mapping even more helpful for users, businesses, developers and society at large,” she added.
It is introducing a new feature on Google Maps where it will call out flyovers along a user’s recommended route that helps the user anticipate upcoming flyovers and prepare ahead of time to get onto the flyover. Both narrow roads and flyover features have been pioneered in India, tailored to the unique navigation needs of users, it said.
The company said it will roll out this feature on Android devices this week in eight cities -- Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Indore, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar and Guwahati – and would also bring this to iOS and more cities soon.
On EV charging stations on both Google Maps and Google Search in India, the company is collaborating with ElectricPe, Ather, Kazam and Statiq, to add authoritative information for over 8,000 charging stations, representing a significant portion of available charging stations in India, it added.