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Google Maps Street View Feature Is Coming To These Indian Cities First, Check If Your City Is On The List.

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Google Maps brought in a new feature in India which is one of the major add-ons to the services. It introduced brand new features of the street view at the Google I/O administered this year. With this street view feature, Indians will experience a 360- degree outlook of the different small regions like landmarks, streets, and regions that were not shown on the map like residential areas or any other location. This feature will provide great help to those who want to know about or explore different unpopular regions in India before investing money or time. Also, it shows local cafes and cultural hotspots. It will enhance the whole tourism experience In India.

“Street View will help people navigate and explore new corners of the country and the world more visually and accurately, enabling them to fully experience what it’s like to be in these places, right from their phone or computer”, Google said.

Source: www.indiatoday.in

Street View will be accessible in India on Google Maps with the latest imagery licensed from local collaborators. It will cover about 1,50,000 km over ten cities in India. Google maps proposed this deal back in 2016 but was rejected by the government of India because, according to their policies, it is not allowed to retain imagery data of the country. Although, a new policy, the new National Geospatial policy, 2021, is introduced which allows such features on the condition that the foreign firms won’t own the imagery data. Genesys International and Tech Mahindra played an important role in bringing this feature to India.

Google Maps
Image source: www.howtogeek.com

Google maps collaborated with an advanced mapping solutions firm, Genesys International and Tech Mahindra to provide a more thorough and detailed look at any location. This tech Giant has announced to extend this feature to 50 cities in India by 2022. For Now, it will be introduced in the following cities:

Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Pune, Vadodara and Nashik. It is already available in Bengaluru.

Google has confirmed its partnership with the traffic authorities and collectors to provide help to people in above right cities and make them aware of travel decisions and avoid overcrowded areas with information about different road closures and incident zone.

It has also collaborated additionally with CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board) to provide knowledge and details about travel decisions in provision with authoritative air quality details. Everyone can get access to this information by tapping into layers and selecting the ‘Air Quality option.

How to use this feature:

  • To use this street view feature, search for a place you need information about, set the pin, select an area for a place marker, or you can use the street view layer.
  • Search for a region, and place the pin.
  • On Your android device, phone or tablet, open the Google Maps application.
  • Hold the place to drop the pin
  • In the end, add the place name or address
  • Scroll down and tap on the photo with the label “street View” or you can select the thumbnail with a street view icon 360 images.
  • After you’re done with all this, tap on back at the top left twice.
  • Now click on the place marker.

How to view the street view layer:

  • On your android device, smartphone or tablet, open the Google Maps app.
  • Click on the Layers shown at the top and then the street view
  • Street View coverage is shown by a blue line on the map. Tap on any blue line to enable the street view.

This feature will bring many great, revolutionary, and innovative changes to India. It will be a great experience for all the explorers and travelers. Brace yourself for a whole new experience.

Founders of Google Map, From Doodling on a White Board to Monitoring the Roads

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Before settling down in the technical sector of Google and long before founding ‘Where 2 Technologies’, all the four founders of Google Map, Noel Gordon, Stephen Ma and the Rasmussen brothers, Lars and Jens, had totally divergent lifestyles. Initially, they had no plans on starting something of their own, but they somehow ended up creating a Sydney-based digital mapping start-up, ‘Where 2 Technologies’, which came under the acquisition of Google after a year of its launch.

Noel Gordon, Stephen Ma, Lars Rasmussen and Jens Rasmussen are the founding members of Google Map. The story starts with the Rasmussen brothers, at the time, when they started from zero with a sky-high dream of becoming millionaires, later, joined by Gordon and Ma.

Before Founding Where 2 Technologies

Born in Denmark, Lars always wanted to become a veterinarian. But, his mindset was changed after a terrible incident happened when he was 13. The Rasmussen brothers started taking programming lessons after school. Lars graduated with a PhD in Theoretical Computing in 1998 and moved to the US in 2000. In the US, he worked for a company, prior to dot-com boom in Silicon Valley. Dot-com or Dot-com Bubble was a business model that was followed by many companies to expand rapidly and capture the market.

After the stock market crashed in the year 2000 (also known as the dot-com boom), the Rasmussen brothers went through a $45 million loss in start-up capital. Though it was a major loss, they didn’t consider giving up as an option. With no savings and a mere $16 in their pockets, they started thinking of building a start-up. After the dot-com bust, the two needed to come up with something very unique, and something which, people would be interested to invest in. They started to work with mapping and navigation systems, to create something unusual and to set their application apart from already existing mapping software. And that is how they developed the idea of Where 2 Technologies, one of the most widely used platforms for navigation.

Google Map
Image Source: medium.com

After six months of diligent hard work, they finally had a prototype to show and went to meet Frank Marshall, a private investor, to discuss fundings. Marshall was a very influential person, and it was him, who set all the meetings between Rasmussen brothers and high profile investors.

Where 2 Technologies really started taking shape after the other two founders joined Rasmussen brothers in the venture. Before joining Where 2 Technologies, Ma worked at a petrol station, and Gordon worked in his father-in-law’s clothing factory.

The Real Struggle

When the two bothers were still struggling with the idea of a new mapping system, Lars flew to Australia to live with his girlfriend. In Australia, Lars sought out Gordon and Stephen, when the brothers were already bankrupt. Then, with a little funding from Gordon, Where 2 Technologies was actually created and started shaping towards perfection. The team worked in the spare bedroom with conditions led by Gordon’s girlfriend. They didn’t work after 5, and also, spared the weekends. Gordon, in one of his interviews, said that they might be the only start-up in the entire world that worked from 9 to 5.

The next step was to get the right investors for the idea. They jot down the list of potential competitors, list of buyers, capital firms and technical strategies for Where 2 Technologies. By this time, they were already living lives with maxed out credit cards, but the zeal to achieve the goal was untamed. After showing a few prototypes to some of the huge investors, the real deal began when they had to represent the idea of advanced digital mapping to Google’s co-founder, Larry Page.

At first, Where 2 Technologies created an application for mapping which was supposed to be downloaded, installed, and then used for navigation. But Google wasn’t interested in application software, so it gave the team a deadline to get an idea for a web browser. Within a time span of only three weeks, they required to create a prototype, and that is how the scribbled whiteboard became famous. Finally, the team was able to successfully deliver it in August 2004. And with an unrevealed sum, Where 2 Technologies came under the acquisition of Google. This was Google’s second acquisition.

The Triumph

Even before the founders could embrace success, they found themselves working as Google employees. These Nooglers, that is, new recruits of Google started working at the Australian headquarters of the company. The company launched its IPO soon after they were recruited, where Google valued $23 billion. Among the four of them, Gordon still works at Google, and Ma retired a few years ago.

Google Map was founded on 8th February 2005, and by 2012, the company had over 2,100 employees working in the mapping sector.

The hard work of those four men paid off well because they were never ready to give up.