Google Inc. veteran and VP of Consumer Products Marissa Mayer took the stage at SXSW in Austin, Texas, today and provided and interesting snapshot of Google’s mapping products. Google Maps, the search giant’s ubiquitous cartography service, is provided on all major handsets, and functions as the default service on iOS and Android, the two biggest fish in the smart phone pond.
Across all platforms Google Maps has 150 million mobile users,which makes up 40% of the service’s total usage (from that we can extrapolate that the service has 375 million users worldwide). On Christmas Day 2010 mobile usage exceeded desktop usage for the first time – probably due to excited children checking out Street View on their newly-received iPhones.
Mayer went on to detail Google’s Android-only Navigation service, which comes as standard on any new Android device – and significantly shook up the GPS industry when it launched for free in November 2009.
Using Navigation, Google Maps users have driven 12 billion miles in the last year (that’s the equivalent of travelling to the sun and back 65 times), and Google estimates their newly-launched traffic avoidance feature saves user around two years of lost time per day.
Mayer didn’t comment on how popular Google’s numerous social layers were on Maps. These include GPS-powered stalking service Latitude, Yelp-style review layer Hotpot, and the latest addition, check-ins and deals. Whether Google can successfully parlay their mapping ubiquity into a successful social service is still an unknown, but at least they seem to have the most important piece of the puzzle – the actual mapping – firmly in place.
