On December 13 and 14 we attended the Google Maps Partner Summit in London together with other Google Maps partners from EMEA and LATAM. Due to some virus 😉 the last Google Maps Partner summit dated from 2018 so this was my first edition since joining Localyse in 2019 and it was great to finally meet the Googlers in real life that I’ve been working with in all these years. It was also a great opportunity to connect and share experiences with other Google Maps partners from other countries.
A big thank you to the entire Google Maps team for organizing this summit . These gatherings provide us with a valuable opportunity to connect and engage in meaningful conversations.
We even won a Trophy (1st and 3rd place) during a Kahoot quiz to test our knowledge of the Google Maps Ecosystem.
Tip. When visiting London be sure to visit the Marquis of Granby (no pictures, sorry 🙂 ). This pub was recommended by a colleague Google Maps partner and definitely worth a visit to grab a couple of beers. Luckily bars close at 11PM in London so we were ready for day 2.
Here are some key takeaways from the summit I would like to share with you:
- Sustainability is a board and C-level topic and GEO contributes to having a real impact. Sustainability goals are not just a “nice to have”. Through regulatory pressure organizations are forced to define and reach their sustainability goals. The environmental API’s (Solar API, Air Quality API and Pollen API) are now part of the Google Maps Platform and open up endless possibilities to develop new solutions and use cases. E.g. calculating the solar potential of a roof, an area or even an entire city. Allowing travelers to select a destination with high air quality or patients to mitigate the risk of being exposed to harmful air quality and allergenic pollen.
- Lot’s of new features were released in Google Maps Platform during 2023 to power developer success:
- Next-generation of Cloud-based maps styling with new zoom level customization and usability improvements
- Data-driven styling to bring your data to life
- Advanced Markers to create highly customized, faster performant markers to drive a richer user experience
- Aerial view gives you programmatic access to cinematic videos built with the same 3D map source used by Google Earth
- Build immersive maps at scale with Photorealistic 3D, 2D, and Street View Tiles
- New Places API with access to EV, accessibility features, improved search and many more…
- Routes API, the next generation of directions and distance matrix
- Google’s Mobility Solutions enables you to deliver a better driver (in app navigation) and user experience (better ETA’s, track progress of your delivery,…) and improve the operational efficiency of your fleet operations. Google released their Mobility Solutions Program in 2023 and Localyse is one of the leading partners that enrolled in this program to market these solutions in close collaboration with Google. Think of last mile delivery and on demand rides and delivery use cases.
- End users are demanding a richer and more visual user experience. Generative AI will enable new and conversational customer use cases. For example; through machine learning it will be possible to extract information from street view images and offer more ‘human like’ turn by turn navigation like turn left at McDonalds instead of turn left in 50 meters. Data is the fundament of this all and who else is better at collecting and processing data at scale than Google? Through Google Earth for example, massive volumes of satellite imagery data are available and only through machine learning is it possible to process this amount of data.
Conclusion the map is just the surface, lot’s of data is invisible and AI/ML are influential behind the scene. Combining Google Cloud (e.g. generative AI) with Google Maps (e.g. places details, streetview,…) creates new and endless possibilities to build new solutions. We are only at the forefront and we would love to inspire you how location and GeoSpatial intelligence can help you to accelerate the digital transformation of your business. Feel free to reach out and plan a discovery call with us!
