Google may be feeling the heat from an unlikely source, Nokia, at least in its critical Maps business. The search giant has put location awareness at the heart of its business model, but Nokia has overtaken it in several respects with its cloud-based Here offering ‘ based on the acquisition of Navteq in 2007 ‘ and has also licensed its mapping platform to some powerful partners such as Microsoft, Amazon and a range of car makers.
Google is promising dramatic changes to its own maps to help fend off the Nokia/Microsoft alliance and also, in the Android segment at least, the challenge from Amazon to a Google-centric experience. Some of these changes will be a while coming, but the search firm has a big vision for its platform, though some of its ideas about context awareness and personalization clearly echo those set out by Nokia Here executives this year.
Bernhard Seefeld, product management director for Google Maps, told the GigaOM Roadmap conference this week that future software will ‘build a whole new map for every context and every person’, incorporating all kinds of information about the individual and updating this constantly. He added: “It’s a specific map nobody has seen before, and it’s just there for that moment to visualize the data.”
Pushing a major theme at Google this year, Seefeld talks about applications creating emotional connections for users – “emotional maps that reflect our real life connections and peek into the future and possibly travel there’. This will involve context-aware maps that combine location and personal data, some of that taken from other Google apps, particularly its Google Now personal digital assistant ‘ mainly seen as a response to Apple Siri, but in fact far broader in scope, and with a powerful artificial intelligence engine.
As well as integrating information on a user’s preferences and activities from many sources, the map could then present this in highly visual ways that go well beyond the current graphics. In particular, personalized maps would become interactive, enabling the user to zoom in on certain areas to gain additional information ‘ the scores at a sports stadium for instance ‘ or exchange views with friends.
All that will mean updating the mapping engine itself to ensure it is detailed and up-to-date, and this remains a challenge, especially in urban areas where businesses open and close rapidly. One approach may be to integrate sensor data in future, to add accuracy and provide additional data.