What are the new features?

1. The first one is the Transit Alert feature. It sends information about the status of public transport to the user from its local transit agencies. This helps to alert the user to travel restrictions related to COVID-19, such as the need for mandatory face masks. For example, it helps them to plan their journey according to COVID-19. The facility is currently available in India, Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, France, Netherlands, Thailand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

2. The second feature is for those who use personal cars or cabs. This feature provides alerts about checkpoints and restrictions on the selected route, including crossing national borders (starting with Canada, Mexico, and the US). The user will get the information on the direction screen.

3. Another feature is for those traveling to hospitals or COVID-19 testing centers. It reminds them to validate their eligibility and informs them of the facility guidelines. However, for now, the facility will be available only to hospitals in Indonesia, Israel, South Korea, and the US. Meanwhile, the Testing Centers Alert will only be enabled for now in the US.

To use the features, users will need to download and install the updated version of Google Maps from the App Store Available on Android and iOS platforms.

For More Information Please Visit: https://www.blog.google/products/maps/get-around-safely-these-new-google-maps-features/

According to a report, Google will publish the location data of its users to help the government dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic situation. This will enable the government to know how much social distancing is being implemented.

Location data of users from 131 countries will be made available on a special website called “COVID-19 Community Mobility reports”. In this, there will be data of the user’s movement, including parks, shops, home, workplace, groceries, etc. The company says it’ll contain data from the past several weeks up to until the last 48 to 72 hours.

https://www.blog.google/technology/health/covid-19-community-mobility-reports

According to Google, these reports will help in decision making being taken to manage the condition that occurs due to coronavirus outbreak. Google officially said in a statement that, “In addition to other resources public health officials might have, we hope these reports will support decisions about how to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, this information could help officials understand changes in essential trips that can shape recommendations on business hours or inform delivery service offerings”.

The way Google Maps is used to detect traffic jams or to control traffic in the same way, these new reports will provide data of those users who have activated their location history. It has been said in the post that in this report, any user’s data that identifies the person, information about contacts, movements, etc. will not be provided. From China to Singapore and Israel, governments have asked for electronic monitoring of people’s movement to prevent the virus from growing. Smartphone data sharing has been started in Europe and America.

Berlin-based Simon Weckert posted a video of this experiment to his YouTube account. The video shows him placing 99 smartphones in a small cart and circling in front of Google’s office and some streets in Berlin. With 99 smartphones in his hand cart running in slow motion simultaneously, Google Maps showed traffic jams along the way, while the route was completely empty at that time.

In the video description, Simon wrote” 99 smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps. Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic”.

A spokesperson from Google also responded to this situation with 9to5google.com “Whether, via car or cart or camel, we love seeing creative uses of Google Maps as it helps us make maps work better over time. Traffic data in Google Maps has refreshed continuously thanks to information from a variety of sources, including aggregated anonymized data from people who have location services turned on and contributions from the Google Maps community. We’ve launched the ability to distinguish between cars and motorcycles in several countries including India, Indonesia and Egypt, though we haven’t quite cracked travelling by wagon. We appreciate seeing creative uses of Google Maps like this as it helps us make maps work better over time”

This experiment shows that Google Maps can easily be tricked with some manipulations.