AI will drive the future of Google Maps in India, says VP Miriam Daniel

This map data is serving millions of users on a daily basis, on average surfacing over 50 million searches across multiple languages, and powering over 2.5 billion kilometres of directions every single day on Google Maps in India, she said.

Daniel said that the technology has played a key role in mapmaking in the past decade. "Understanding the imagery, extracting map facts (such as a road segment, a building, a store, a place of interest), putting it on the map and processing it would not be possible without AI. Many different AI models have already been in play," she said.

Google is also tapping into this technology to help Indian cities address problems such as traffic congestion. As part of an initiative called Project Greenlight, the tech giant is analysing traffic patterns to help cities in optimise traffic flow at intersections.

"Our AI models are helping cities like Bengaluru and Kolkata model traffic lights and say what sort of traffic light durations will reduce wait time at these intersections. And when we reduce wait time, we reduce carbon emissions as well," Daniel said. She mentioned that they have done some pilots in a few cities right now and if it works well, the company will scale it up to more cities in the future.

Also read: Tech capital Bengaluru to use AI for road traffic management

Daniel said new forms of AI such as generative AI will enable the tech giant to serve user needs in more rich ways. "Today people come in and say show me an ATM near me, Tomorrow, people can say show me an ATM that accepts a certain credit card or a certain bank. So the complexity will increase and new AI capabilities will allow us to serve those needs better," she said.

Google's latest multimodal AI model Gemini will "supercharge some of the use cases that we can bring for end users" she added, without disclosing any specific details.

Making Maps more immersive

On December 19, Google announced a new India-first feature, Address descriptors, that aims to help users better understand unfamiliar addresses through landmarks and places of interest on Google Maps, similar to how they communicate addresses in real life.

Through this feature, Google Maps will automatically find up to five of the most relevant landmarks and area names around a pinned address, using a combination of machine learning signals, and display the landmark reference when people share their location. This is essentially an extension of landmark-based navigation that Google introduced a few years ago. The feature is expected to be rolled out to users across India early next year.

Google is also introducing Live View walking navigation to the country, through which users will see arrow marks, directions, and distance markers overlaid on the Maps screen, helping them quickly figure out which way to head.

A screenshot of Google Live View Walking Navigation

In addition, the company is bringing in its visual search tool Lens to Maps to help users easily understand their surroundings. This will enable users to point their camera while walking down a street to see nearby restaurants and cafes, along with useful information like opening hours, ratings, reviews and photos. The feature will be launching in 15 cities across India in January 2024, starting with Android devices.

Both the immersive experiences - Lens in Maps and Live View walking navigation - are being created by combining Street View imagery along with advanced AI models and augmented reality (AR) technologies.

Daniel said these features are part of the company's plan to make maps more visual and immersive in India in order to cater to the changing user behavior and their evolving expectations. "We believe this to be the next frontier for Google Maps...We're committed to building a map that helps people go from knowing about a place to truly experiencing it," she said.

"Indian patterns for searches were very different. All over the world, users were searching for restaurants, entertainment, and so on. But in India, a massive number of searches were for religious institutions, medical institutions, and government services among others," she added.

Google has been making a concerted effort towards adding more places and businesses to the map in the country, especially those that Indian users often search for in the past few years. This includes places of worship, medical facilities, government services and landmarks that people typically use to communicate their addresses such as behind a school or next to the local post office.

A key challenge that Google Maps, however, faces in India is a rapidly changing landscape, said Daniel. "For instance, there is road closure somewhere or traffic has stopped suddenly due to an accident. So, the constant pace of unpredictable change is a complexity and that is not going to get easier. We will have to innovate around it," she said.

Partnership with ONDC and Namma Yatri

People's mobility patterns are also changing as congestion rises in metro cities, with many preferring to take metro trains or other forms of public transit instead of driving. "Hence, we also have to adapt the pace at which we are innovating and localising for India...we have a vision of democratising public transit for every user in India," she said.

Daniel said that India is uniquely multimodal, since people take different modes of transport within a single trip. For instance, one can walk, take a auto or hail a cab, then take a metro or a train, and again walk or take a cab to get to their final destination. Google Maps currently covers about 20 cities with public transport.

"Up until now, there are a few segments we're able to stitch together... but there's many more cities, with local trains, buses, and other types of offerings...we need all of these agencies to come together and seamlessly integrate," she said.

Also read: Google aims to help reduce traffic congestion and improve road safety in India with key tie-ups

Google is partnering with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and mobility app Namma Yatri as a step towards achieving this vision.

"We are working with ONDC on the shared vision of democratizing public transport at scale, so that many more users can easily find these transportation options once they're digitized, and be able to book their entire trip, not just every leg in different apps and get to where they want to go," Daniel said.

The Namma Yatri partnership will bring in Metro schedules and bookings via ONDC into Google Maps, starting with Kochi Metro mid-next year.

"If we have to go city by city and work with every transit agency or every service provider, it could take forever to cover the length and breadth of India and give equal access to digitization of public transit for everyone in India. We are hoping that with a collaboration with an open network like ONDC, more agencies and cities feel motivated to put their supply online. As and when they come up, it will be seamlessly lit up on Google Maps as well" Daniel said.