In a world of constant change, Google Maps Platform empowers developers to build apps and websites using its fresh, comprehensive information. With access to details about more than 250 million places and Street View imagery across more than 110 countries, developers can continually tap into our data to solve real-world problems. Today we’re announcing new capabilities spanning AI, data analytics, and our suite of Environment products that will help business decision makers, developers, and cities solve challenging problems and create helpful experiences for their users.
Introducing Geospatial Analytics
Google Maps Platform is used by over 10 million websites and apps. Customers want to access more insights from our up-to-date, comprehensive geospatial data, so they can make more informed business and sustainability decisions. That’s why for the first time, we’re integrating new Google Maps Platform datasets, along with Earth Engine datasets and capabilities, directly into BigQuery, to make it easier for data analysts and decision makers to access insights. Read this blog to go deeper on our geospatial analytics capabilities. Starting today, the following datasets can be accessed in BigQuery:
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Our first Imagery Insights dataset, available in Experimental, applies Vertex AI in Google Cloud directly to Street View imagery in data clean rooms, to identify, detect, and see the condition of key infrastructure objects, like telephone poles, street signs, roads, and bridges. If a telecom company wants to identify which utility poles require maintenance, they can use this dataset to more easily locate all their poles virtually.
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Places Insights available in Preview, enables businesses to get customized, aggregated insights about many places in a wider area, based on ratings, store hours, parking, wheelchair accessibility, and more. If a retailer wants to open a new store in an area with a high concentration of expensive restaurants and a low density of large retail brands, Places Insights will provide insights on locations that fit this criteria.
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Roads Management Insights available in Preview, helps public sector and road authorities analyze traffic data and improve roads with historical and real-time traffic information. For example, traffic authorities can use the insights from this to identify accident-prone areas and add safety measures like speed bumps or stop signs. They can also build models that forecast traffic conditions to mitigate congestion before it even occurs.
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Earth Engine in BigQuery available in Preview, enables organizations to derive sustainability insights, such as wildfire risk or deforestation, from satellite imagery for a specified area of interest. With a new geospatial function and 20 new Earth Engine datasets available in BigQuery, this feature makes advanced geospatial analysis accessible to data analysts–even if they don’t have remote sensing expertise.
In addition to these new geospatial analytics capabilities, Google Earth now provides no-code geospatial analytics tools that enable any professional to access insights. To offer a more comprehensive suite of geospatial tools for developers, data analysts and geospatial practitioners, we're bringing Google Earth–which remains available for everyone–and our new geospatial analytics datasets into the Google Maps Platform family. Visit our new website to learn more about our broader geospatial analytics portfolio.
Expanding Environment products
At Cloud Next 2023 we launched a new suite of Environment products (Air Quality, Pollen and Solar APIs) to help businesses adapt to a changing climate. We’re excited to announce the first Google Weather API, in Preview for developers. We use trusted sources and our proprietary algorithm to provide current conditions, forecasts, and historical data. Developers can now access essential weather information to build solutions, enhance user experiences, and improve decision making ranging all the way from trip planning to adapting to the challenges of extreme weather events. Learn more here.
Example of how weather data can be integrated into a travel experience
Helping developers build generative AI applications
From using AI to keep our maps data fresh to introducing Gemini capabilities in Google Earth last year, we’re committed to building helpful AI products to help power your businesses and experiences. As more developers build generative AI products in Vertex AI, we’re making it possible to ground your agents with Google Maps. Today, we’re announcing the Experimental release of Grounding with Google Maps in Vertex AI. This enables businesses to augment Gemini models with trusted information from Maps to provide fresh and helpful responses for generative AI agents. Learn more here.
Example of a generative AI agent experience built with Grounding with Google Maps in Vertex AI
We're able to surface these meaningful and detailed insights about the world because of the quality and breadth of Google Maps. It's the foundation that makes this possible. By providing fresh, comprehensive information about the world, combined with powerful AI and analytics, business decision makers, developers and cities can get actionable insights from our products to drive meaningful, real-world impact.
