Google Inc’s digital mapping service will get several new features in hopes of becoming more convenient, comprehensive and compelling as it braces for a potential loss in traffic from Apple Inc’s hot-selling mobile devices.
Wednesday’s preview of the mapping service’s coming attractions seemed timed to blunt the blow from the loss of a prized perch as the built-in navigation service on Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Apple intends to end its five-year partnership with Google’s mobile maps next week, when it will unveil its own service, according to recent reports in the Wall Street Journal and the technology blog 9to5.
Brian McClendon, a Google vice president who oversees the mapping service, did not directly address reporters’ questions about the possible Apple setback.
Photo: Reuters
“We will continue to make Google Maps available as widely as possible,” he said.
Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller declined to comment.
If Apple ousts Google Maps from the prominent spot on the iPhone and iPad, it would be the latest fissure between two former allies. Their relationship has been degenerating into a bitter rivalry since Google’s 2008 release of Android to compete with the iPhone. Since then, both companies have increasingly been encroaching on each other’s turf.
Processing the mobile mapping requests from users of Apple’s devices has provided Google with valuable insights into people’s whereabouts and preferences. That, in turn, has helped Google sell more ads to local businesses.
None of the new features touted on Wednesday by Google will be available for at least several more weeks. The upcoming options include maps that can be downloaded on mobile devices for offline access and more 3D imagery — the latter coming from its own fleet of planes.
Google devoted much of the presentation to a dissertation on all the technological wizardry that it has poured into its maps during the past seven years. The service now attracts more than 1 billion users around the world.
Without directly saying so, Google seemed to be trying to convey how difficult it would be for Apple or any other newcomer to build maps that include as many useful tools.
Besides providing 42 million kilometers of driving directions, Google’s maps now include imagery of most of the world’s neighborhoods. McClendon bragged that 75 percent of the global population can now call up a high-resolution image of their home on Google’s maps, up from 37 percent six years ago.
Google has also traversed 8 million kilometers to take ground-level photos of communities for a feature called Street View. The company has raised privacy concerns by posting photographs that include people in unflattering situations and, at one point, including equipment that vacuumed up personal e-mails sent over wireless networks that were not protected with a password.
Google plans to embellish its maps with even more photos from remote areas, such as hiking trails in the Grand Canyon, with new equipment showcased on Wednesday. The photos will be taken from specially designed equipment attached to a hiker’s backpack. This gear will supplement photo-snapping bicycles that Google has been dispatching to areas that cannot be easily accessed by cars.
The company also disclosed that its planes will photograph swaths of major cities to conjure more realistic 3D views of metropolitan landscapes in the Google Earth version of its maps. The photos taken by the planes are automatically converted into 3D replicas using technology that Google developed for the project.
San Francisco will be one of the first cities to feature the more vivid 3D imagery. Google did not identify other cities on its 3D list, but said the improvements will span communities with a combined population of about 300 million.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day