Google Maps Chief Sees New Directions for Digital Navigation

Christopher Phillips, the head of Google Geo, recently talked with The Wall Street Journal about what he sees as the longer-term future of navigation.

My parents had atlases and roadmaps. Now I’ve got all that and more on my phone. So what will my kids be using to find their way around? 

The future will be a much more photorealistic view of the real world. You’ll be able to transport yourself to what it really looks like to be there at that time of day, with the weather conditions and the “busy-ness” conditions, and then see the best available options to get there.

Are we still going to be sticking with smartphones, or going to augmented-reality glasses or, say, brain implants?

The mobile phone will continue to be a really important device for the foreseeable future. There is some very exciting emerging technology coming down the road that we’ll expect to put information more readily  in the context you’re in. But the phone will continue to be an important part of that.

My experience getting around is: I’ll take my phone out of my pocket, look where I’m going and then stick it back in and keep walking. What are some of the ways you think people will start integrating maps more into their everyday lives?

Using the combination of visual cues, audio cues, augmented reality—all of these are really great ways to help fit your mode of transportation. So if you’re walking, you might be hearing audio combined with visual, because it’s not very safe to be walking around with your phone up and not paying attention to what’s in front of you. But that could be very different than an embedded solution inside a vehicle. The context of how you’re moving about the world will dictate a lot of what is the most critical information to help you in that moment when you’re on the go.

Why make maps more immersive? What’s the benefit of that to the user?

[Before], you kind of had to guess on when you would leave and hope that the conditions didn’t have you run into a situation that made you late. We’re in that next evolution of information, detailed information that can really help you decide where to go and then figure out how to get there in a better way. For example, businesses may be open or closed. Does it have outdoor seating? What’s the weather like? We’ve expanded accessibility information, if you need to go to a place that has wheelchair access. Those are details that you didn’t find in the historical mapping products that now help people make great choices on where to go and how to get there.

What are some of the hurdles that you found when you’re bringing all this information into one place? 

Keeping the product as simple as possible with all of this useful information is a big challenge. One of the ways we’re tackling that is with the visualization of the information. These new immersive visual experiences help you get a lot of information in just a quick glance, versus looking through large lists of information. We’re starting to roll out search with Live View, where you lift up your phone when you’re at a corner, and you can see the different restaurants, ATMs, barber shops, even places that are on the other side of a building that might be blocked from your view.

And then I look at that barber shop and I could see, are they open, closed? How much do they charge for a haircut?

Adding in all these elements seems like it would make it hard to verify if locations are accurate. How do you keep on top of that?

It’s really hard, but it’s part of our responsibility and we use all kinds of methods to accomplish that. We have what we can collect ourselves, we work with businesses, we work with governments and authoritative services. We’ve also used really interesting AI and machine-learning techniques. For example, during COVID the business hours of places were changing all the time. So we deployed technology to call businesses and very simply let them know as an automated service where they could answer: Have your hours changed? Do you have any new COVID restrictions? That helped us scale to millions of businesses to check on accurate information.

Google agreed to pay more than $390 million to settle allegations by states that it continued to track users even when location tracking on their phones was turned off. Why should consumers trust Google Maps over alternative mapping apps?

We take data privacy, location privacy very seriously, and the product policies that settlement was based on are outdated and have changed. We’ve made so many improvements to helping people who use our products have transparency and control. So there are many, many capabilities that we have available today and that we continue to build. 

Write to Danny Lewis at [email protected]

Christopher Phillips, the head of Google Geo, recently talked with The Wall Street Journal about what he sees as the longer-term future of navigation.

My parents had atlases and roadmaps. Now I’ve got all that and more on my phone. So what will my kids be using to find their way around? 

The future will be a much more photorealistic view of the real world. You’ll be able to transport yourself to what it really looks like to be there at that time of day, with the weather conditions and the “busy-ness” conditions, and then see the best available options to get there.

Are we still going to be sticking with smartphones, or going to augmented-reality glasses or, say, brain implants?

The mobile phone will continue to be a really important device for the foreseeable future. There is some very exciting emerging technology coming down the road that we’ll expect to put information more readily  in the context you’re in. But the phone will continue to be an important part of that.

My experience getting around is: I’ll take my phone out of my pocket, look where I’m going and then stick it back in and keep walking. What are some of the ways you think people will start integrating maps more into their everyday lives?

Using the combination of visual cues, audio cues, augmented reality—all of these are really great ways to help fit your mode of transportation. So if you’re walking, you might be hearing audio combined with visual, because it’s not very safe to be walking around with your phone up and not paying attention to what’s in front of you. But that could be very different than an embedded solution inside a vehicle. The context of how you’re moving about the world will dictate a lot of what is the most critical information to help you in that moment when you’re on the go.

Why make maps more immersive? What’s the benefit of that to the user?

[Before], you kind of had to guess on when you would leave and hope that the conditions didn’t have you run into a situation that made you late. We’re in that next evolution of information, detailed information that can really help you decide where to go and then figure out how to get there in a better way. For example, businesses may be open or closed. Does it have outdoor seating? What’s the weather like? We’ve expanded accessibility information, if you need to go to a place that has wheelchair access. Those are details that you didn’t find in the historical mapping products that now help people make great choices on where to go and how to get there.

What are some of the hurdles that you found when you’re bringing all this information into one place? 

Keeping the product as simple as possible with all of this useful information is a big challenge. One of the ways we’re tackling that is with the visualization of the information. These new immersive visual experiences help you get a lot of information in just a quick glance, versus looking through large lists of information. We’re starting to roll out search with Live View, where you lift up your phone when you’re at a corner, and you can see the different restaurants, ATMs, barber shops, even places that are on the other side of a building that might be blocked from your view.

And then I look at that barber shop and I could see, are they open, closed? How much do they charge for a haircut?

Adding in all these elements seems like it would make it hard to verify if locations are accurate. How do you keep on top of that?

It’s really hard, but it’s part of our responsibility and we use all kinds of methods to accomplish that. We have what we can collect ourselves, we work with businesses, we work with governments and authoritative services. We’ve also used really interesting AI and machine-learning techniques. For example, during COVID the business hours of places were changing all the time. So we deployed technology to call businesses and very simply let them know as an automated service where they could answer: Have your hours changed? Do you have any new COVID restrictions? That helped us scale to millions of businesses to check on accurate information.

Google agreed to pay more than $390 million to settle allegations by states that it continued to track users even when location tracking on their phones was turned off. Why should consumers trust Google Maps over alternative mapping apps?

We take data privacy, location privacy very seriously, and the product policies that settlement was based on are outdated and have changed. We’ve made so many improvements to helping people who use our products have transparency and control. So there are many, many capabilities that we have available today and that we continue to build. 

Write to Danny Lewis at [email protected]