Google Maps Comes Up With New Updates Including Indian Languages And Plus Codes to Locate Addresses Easier

In Indian cities, house numbers and street names are too creative and equally difficult for one to locate the address. Places are changing rapidly with constructions and flyovers, the landmark you once used to explain your address can disappear overnight. Anyone who has tried to explain a full address to a pizza delivery guy, knows the difficulty in accurately conveying the location. Thankfully, our very own Google has solution to all these problems. It has become less stressful to find the locations and get driving directions with the help of Google Maps. In an effort to make it simpler for users, Google India on March 13 has announced a string for updates and features on Maps. “Plus Codes”, a location-based digital addressing system, “Add an Address”, enable users to contribute new or missing address and “Voice Navigation” in six additional regional languages. Yes, it is no more a challenge for anybody to reach at a given residential address.

Suren Ruhela, Director of Google Maps Next Billion Users reported, “Millions of people and places in India are hard to locate -- especially those in remote areas. We are deeply committed to helping find solutions to these challenges.” Well, it is true that few addresses can be quickly spotted with accurate street names and house numbers while there are other locations which takes long time. The tech giant introduced “Plus Codes” which is an open sourced solution representing a simple and consistent addressing system and works not only in India but globally.

Plus Codes

According to Google India Blog, “Plus Codes” is based on dividing the geographical surface of the Earth into tiny ‘tiled areas’, assigning a unique code to each of them. This code comprises of 6 characters along with the name of the city; ‘6-character + City’ format. The location will prompt quickly!

Add an Address

“Add an Address” is yet another unique step that allow the users to submit new or missing addresses through this feature. Google India will verify the location first and will make sure those address is searchable.

Voice Navigation

“Voice Navigation” has vastly improved as it added 6 additional languages. Yes, you read it right! Since the application launched Hindi three years ago, we have been a living proof as it consistently helped us to locate our destination. And this time, they have presented six additional Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam.

A land of multicultural and multilingual country with so many divergent locations, it is indeed a remarkable step that redefines use of technology. So, the next time you are using Google Maps, make sure you use all these features.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 13, 2018 03:56 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).