India provides a springboard to develop for global use: Google’s Miriam Daniel

At the turn of the year, an updated Google Maps will begin to helpfully add landmarks or popular area references to any address pins you share with friends or family

New Delhi: As essential as navigation apps in getting us from point A to point B, they aren’t about just that. For Google, incentives too are provided by a need to stay ahead of an increasingly focused navigation app rivals that focus on public transport, as well as increasing competition from rivals such as India’s MapmyIndia Mappls and the UK’s What3Words. They took a big step forward this week, with a slew of updates for Google Maps (most of these will roll out in January of 2024), defining experience and relevance. In a way, this underlines the road map for Google Maps in India, and how it’ll define development for the world.

(Official image)

Here’s a snapshot of Google Maps’ evolution, underlined by artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR). At the turn of the year, an updated Google Maps will begin to helpfully add landmarks or popular area references to any address pins you share with friends or family (this can be via any medium, including WhatsApp messages). Building on Street View is the integration of Google Lens functionality which will allow users to simply point the phone’s camera via the Maps app to view overlays pointing to nearby shops, restaurants, cafes and other important points of interest, alongside details such as business hours and ratings.

Walking navigation is getting its biggest update in years, as is public transport with new city additions (Mumbai and Kolkata, as significant as they are) for metro trains on the Where Is My Train app. Fuel-efficient routing too, which will rely on upgraded algorithms to figure best possible routing based on the fuel type for your specific mode of transport, factoring intersections, elevation changes alongside real-time traffic data. It may sound like a one-size-fits-all solution but isn’t – specific guidance for two-wheelers will work differently from cars. This specific functionality is being launched in India and Indonesia first.

That’s an increasingly relevant theme, with Google setting the tone for India and therefore, global development of Google Maps. “We believe the next frontier of Google Maps is helping people go from knowing about a place to truly experiencing it,” says Miriam Daniel, Vice President and General Manager for Google Maps at Google, while speaking with HT. “We’re also focussed on catering to India’s diverse mobility needs, from sustainable journeys to public transport,” she adds. Edited excerpts.

Q. How would you outline Google Maps’ journey in India been thus far and a perspective to Maps’ user base in India, with numbers?

Miriam Daniel: We have had a pretty tremendous journey over the last 15 years that Google Maps has been in India. You know, it has slowly grown both in coverage and in user engagement. We reached a significant milestone somewhere around a year and a half ago when we actually partnered with local players such as Genesys and Tech Mahindra and brought Street View to India.

Since we have launched Street View in India, we have got nearly 50 million views almost every month. People love Street View. They use it to look back at places they grew up in or look ahead at places they are going to, places they might want to live, a place they are visiting, they might be looking for parking. There are so many ways in which it is being used to truly experience what that destination looks like before they even go there. It has actually opened a door for a lot of innovation in India.

Because of Street View, we have been able to map millions and millions of kilometres of roads and put them on the map. We have actually been able to put 300 million buildings on the map and buildings truly help with direction and orientation when you are navigating. We have also been able to put 30 million or so businesses on the map and this is really important because this is socio -economic development. When we put businesses on the map that were never there before or maybe never had a presence on the map before, all of a sudden, they can now connect with customers around them.

So, we actually connect 900 million connections between users and merchants in a year. That’s a huge number that helps with economic development. Now beyond merchants, Street View has also helped us with a lot of new innovation that we announced.

Q. There is a serious layer of new tech such as AR underlining upcoming functionality, and experience?

MD: Lens and Maps is an example where you’re actually getting to a destination, and you want to orient yourself quickly. And you want to maybe look for an ATM around you or a bakery or a store that’s selling something specific or a restaurant that you’re looking to get to. And just opening the maps and tapping on the camera and pointing around the world around you, it’ll show you all the POIs around you.

This is because we’re able to geospatially locate where you are, compare it to millions and millions of Street View images and say, this is the image or the scene that you’re actually looking at in the real world. With that, we’re able to guide you to real businesses around you.

Another feature we announced is live view walking navigation. When you’re actually out there in the real world, let’s say you just got out of a cab or came out of the metro, and how often have we found it hard to figure out which direction to head out in? Live view walking navigation can get you that last leg of your journey, actually take you to the destination by giving you directions through your camera, through augmented reality. Some of these innovations wouldn’t even be possible if we cannot bring foundational capabilities like Street View to India.

Now, beyond that, we’re innovating in mobility as well. We’re bringing eco -friendly or fuel -efficient routing.

Q. There’s the question of public transport as an increasingly important part of a navigation chain. What are the long-term plans?

MD: It is a major area of investment for us. A majority of our users in India still use public transit and we have about 20 cities covered now for public transit. We get buses or intra -city trains or metros but we hope to cover more and more cities over the next few years.

We’ve talked about bringing Mumbai and local trains to Where’s My Train, which is the number one travel app in India and one of our portfolio apps. Also, our partnership with ONDC (Open Network Digital Commerce) where it’s really lined up with our vision to democratise different forms of public transit, bring all these services to end users in India so that they can plan every leg of their journey, whether they’re walking and then taking a metro or taking a cab or a ride -share auto. They should just be able to book all of that and get to their destination seamlessly.

We hope to truly democratise public transportation in India.

Our vision for this partnership is actually being brought to life by our collaboration with Namma Yatri as well. The combination of ONDC enabling all of these suppliers on their open network, Namma Yatri being the app that is sourcing all this information and making it available so users can book it. Here, Google Maps is giving the reach so we can introduce services to more and more end users.

We want to make sure that we give equal access to digitised information for users in tier two, tier three cities as well, not just in tier one cities and so we want to make sure that we provide that access in an affordable way for all of our users in India.

Q. Does India continue to provide a starting line, a strong base, for developing features that have global relevance?

MD: Absolutely. There are a lot of things that are very unique to India because of its vastness, its complexity, diversity and so on. For example, you know, India is the biggest two -wheeler nation. Therefore, we launched two-wheeler modes for the first time in India but since then we’ve taken it to other parts of Asia and Africa and South America, where two-wheelers are prominent.

Offline maps were first built for India because of spotty coverage and that’s helping so many parts of the world now. Most recently, because we were able to extract a lot of POIs or businesses through Street View and put it on the map, these same businesses are actually landmarks that people use for guidance and navigation and directions. Now we’re introducing landmark based addressing as an India first thing, but it will be absolutely useful to scale that into Indonesia or Brazil or sub-Saharan Africa.

There are a lot of things like that where we are innovating in India, but we will scale it globally wherever the profiles are matching.

Q. There has been conversations about AI defining more and more of the information over days we see in maps. How has AI helped not just for navigation but also value -added information we see and with building new features?

MD: Over the last decade, AI has been sprinkled into everything we do. Even when people come in and search for an ATM or a bank, or search for a restaurant nearby, there is AI involved in our underlying search models that bring back the nearby relevant results. Beyond that, there are immersive ways to explore the world such as with lens or live view walking navigation, which would not be possible without AI. Neither would driving and navigation where historical traffic patterns and current traffic are applied to AI models to determine the ETA.

AI has accelerated our ability to build solutions that can scale to the diversity and complexity of a country like India.

I also want to say the fuel-efficient routing that we just launched, applies advanced AI models to a lot of inputs that we get you know from the routes, traffic speeds, road conditions, is there an elevation, is it stop and go traffic or what type of engine or vehicle you might have. All these inputs are brought together, and energy models are applied to determine if a particular route would actually be fuel efficient for you and in cost savings as well as saving emissions for that trip.

AI is sprinkled into everything we do, and we’ll continue to use advanced AI capabilities to launch more futures next year as well.

Q. Are there any interesting, perhaps unique use cases in India that indicate how users here have interacted with Street View over the past year? Does that help chart the next frontier?

MD: For me personally, and a lot of people I know, send me images of places they grew in. There’s a little bit of a nostalgia element there, and the memories come back. People have been using it a lot to actually view a pace and see how it has changed over time, even if they cannot visit that place anymore.

But beyond that, it’s actually opened the doors to the world. Whether it is Indian users looking at places across the globe, or other users looking at Indian roads and streets and attractions, equally it has opened up the world.

You can explore a place and experience it somewhat, even before you go there. And then beyond that, as I said earlier, Street View is a fundamental technology enabler for many other use cases in India. Even things like landmark base addressing or giving you walking navigation.

In terms of what next for Street View, these innovations will come to more cities around you. They will have to scale to many cities. And we’ll need creative ideas as to how to use some of these images to solve everyday problems.

Q. In India, much like it is globally, green mobility gradually becomes relevant. We’ve already seen Maps overlay EV charging info in different parts of the world. Is that still a challenge in India since infrastructure is sparse, but evolving quickly?

MD: Well, it’s both a challenge and an opportunity because it’s in the stage of transformation now, and we welcome that change. It’s good for the planet, for everyone. We’re working with a lot of providers in this segment to make sure that we are bringing EV charging information, availability, and other such things so that you can plan your EV trips as you set out, with Google Maps.

Q. In India, there’s increasing competition by made-in-India apps. Is competition good? And does that change Google’s approach towards mapping?

MD: Choice is always good for end users. it keeps everyone on their toes, pushes innovation. With Google Maps, we strongly believe in the need to stay focused on end user problems and their needs. We’re constantly thinking about what the unique needs in India are and what problems we must solve. We will continue to keep this drum beat of solving those problems for Indian users.

Q. How do you envision a future of Maps, in India, building for the world?

MD: I would say, given the scale of India, its complexities as well as diversity and Indian users’ needs, our problem is always going to be one of getting to scale. This is where we have to rely on technologies like AI, where we have to invent and reinvent, and then simplify the experience for end users. We must make sure we are providing access to everybody in India.