Editor's note: Meet the Mapmakers is a new series highlighting the people who shape Google Maps Platform. Tune in as our Mapmakers offer their unique perspectives on the platform’s present and future, and share stories about their personal journeys.
When I was in grade school, my dad brought home an Apple IIe. I remember playing around with bulletin board systems, taking the one phone in the house, and using our dial-up modem to log onto these boards. I didn't really know what I was doing. My mom got these programming magazines, and at the back they had programs you could follow to create ASCII art or simple text adventures. I’d spend hours experimenting and tinkering. That curiosity stuck with me for life.
Early career at Google
I joined Google in 2010. I started out at YouTube as a Technical Account Manager. (Of note, I helped Rebecca Black re-monetize one of her videos. That was a big day.) I eventually found my way to Google Maps via the Go-to-market team. The team needed someone to build demos that they could vet in front of customers and executives. I spent a good year just meandering around Google looking for technologies you could mash up with Maps. It was a lot of fun, because there were so many problems to solve and so much incredible technology.
Experimenting with Maps mashups
One of the earliest and most exciting prototypes I worked on was a mashup between our Map Tiles product and the Unity game engine. It started with the simple spark of an idea – ‘Can we do this?’. Then we built a proof of concept and wondered, ‘Will anybody want this?’. We traveled around the world talking to game developers and eventually fleshed out the product features, refined the value proposition, and found customers. It was a rare and special experience, because I got to be a part of the entire lifespan of a product.
The myth of original ideas
It took me a while to realize that you don’t need to come up with a completely original idea to make an impact. Even Einstein wasn’t the only one with his groundbreaking theories—there were others who had similar ideas around the same time. Success isn’t just about the originality of the idea; it’s about execution. Sometimes, you’ll spark something that others can build on.
For example, back in 2017, we tried to map the inside of a Smart and Final with a camera. The idea was, can we allow retail shops to create an indoor map if we ran a camera down their aisles, geolocated where the given video was taken, and extracted out of the video what was actually on the aisle? That was a tremendous flop. It didn’t even come close to working! And it turns out five years later some other team at Google came by and did it successfully. Because the technology had advanced — the locating of the camera, the reading of the imagery, all of it. The failures we experience today can become the foundations of future success.
Gen AI and Maps hackathon
Recently, I was playing around with Gen AI and Maps for a hackathon. The goal was all about making in-car navigation and directions more human. Imagine this: you're driving down the road and instead of just hearing "turn right on Street A" (which is very clinical), your car console pulls up a Street View picture and tells you, "Okay, turn right AFTER you see the BP with the green awning and the large oak tree." It’s a much more relatable way to communicate. People all over the world use landmarks to navigate. It's something we all do naturally.
In this route narration demo Street View and precise directions improve the navigation experience.
A snapshot of the route narration demo that I built during a recent hackathon for Maps and Gen AI.
For longer routes we can zoom out and get descriptions like, "Get ready for a scenic drive—you'll be passing cornfields along I-5 for the next few hours." And if you're ever unsure, you can just ask, "Hey, are we still on the right track?". It's like having a co-pilot who knows exactly where you're going. I really think this whole natural language thing could be huge for Google Maps—it just makes all the rich data we have so much more accessible and relatable.
A life-altering decision
In high school, I got recruited to play college football. That was a life goal of mine. So I get to college, and I’m sitting on the field talking to my new coach. He asked me if I had thought about a major yet. I said I was thinking about architecture. He told me, the lab requirements for architecture are really intense. You might not have time to play football. So I’m like, forget architecture. I’ll go for my number two choice, computer science. I quickly learned the lab requirements for computer science were just as demanding—but it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.
Ken Nevarez as a young college footballer.
Looking back, my journey—from tinkering with an Apple IIe as a kid to working on innovative products at Google—has taught me that curiosity and resilience are the keys to growth. Every new challenge, whether a groundbreaking success or a complete failure, is an opportunity to push boundaries and spark new possibilities. You don’t need to have the first or even the best idea. What matters is having the courage to explore, experiment, and bring ideas to life. The most rewarding innovations come not from knowing all the answers but from daring to ask, "What if?" and pursuing that question with everything you've got.
Ken Nevarez is a Developer Relations Engineer on the Google Maps Platform team based in Mountain View.
