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Google Maps Gaining Tools for Drawing Missing Roads, Sharing Photo Updates

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Google today announced a number of improvements that are coming to the Google Maps app in the near future, including a tool that makes it easier to highlight missing roads and transportation errors.


There's a new road editing tool available on the desktop, accessible by going to maps.google.com. Users can click on the side menu button and select the "Edit the map" option to get to the a "Missing Road" entry.

Choosing the Missing Road option lets users add missing roads by drawing lines, which is an upgrade from the prior tool that was pin based. Users could drop a pin where there was an error, but the new road drawing tool allows for better accuracy.

In addition to drawing lines to add missing roads, the tool lets users rename roads, change the direction of a road, and realign or delete incorrect roads. There are also tools for informing Google about road closures with specific dates, reasons, and routes.

Google is vetting all contributed road updates before publishing them to maps. The new editing feature is rolling out over the coming months to more than 80 countries.

Along with new road editing tools, Google is adding a photos update option to Google Maps. In the coming weeks, Google plans to add a tool that will let users "share experiences and highlights" with their recent photos.

google-photo-updates.jpg

Photo updates can be added by going to the "Updates" tab when viewing a specific place in Google Maps and tapping the "upload a photo update" button. The tool will also display photos shared by others.

Article Link: Google Maps Gaining Tools for Drawing Missing Roads, Sharing Photo Updates
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/11/google-maps-missing-road-tools/
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MacRumors said:
There's a new road editing tool available on the desktop, accessible by going to maps.google.com. Users can click on the side menu button and select the "Edit the map" option to get to the a "Missing Road" entry.

Choosing the Missing Road option lets users add missing roads by drawing lines, which is an upgrade from the prior tool that was pin based. Users could drop a pin where there was an error, but the new road drawing tool allows for better accuracy.

In addition to drawing lines to add missing roads, the tool lets users rename roads, change the direction of a road, and realign or delete incorrect roads.
Click to expand...
Yeah. Nothing could go wrong with this.
 
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MacRumors said:
In addition to drawing lines to add missing roads, the tool lets users rename roads, change the direction of a road, and realign or delete incorrect roads.
Click to expand...

Good!

For some reason... Google thinks my neighbor's driveway is a road.

This house has been here for over 30 years... but only recently Google has upgraded his driveway to a road. And it's annoying to see it every time I open Maps.

🤣

road-google.jpg
 
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This is a pretty nice feature. I hope Apple implements something similar soon. Competition is great for consumers! (in most cases)

We have good progress with the traffic/construction/speed trap updates coming, so seems like we’re going in the right direction.
 
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Michael Scrip said:
Good!

For some reason... Google thinks my neighbor's driveway is a road.

This house has been here for over 30 years... but only recently Google has upgraded his driveway to a road. And it's annoying to see it every time I open Maps.

🤣

View attachment 1742328
Click to expand...
He’s just flexing on everyone else with his big house. Probably edited the maps to make it look like that on purpose
 
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LeadingHeat said:
He’s just flexing on everyone else with his big house. Probably edited the maps to make it look like that on purpose
Click to expand...

LOL... no... my house is north of there. :)

And my neighbor's house isn't that big... the leftmost half of the house is the garage.

But what does any of that have to do with the fact that Google thinks his driveway is a road?

Here is the address in question... look for yourself: LINK
 
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For some reason my eyeballs read the title as "Apple Maps..."
and as I began skimming down to the next article (since Apple Maps doesn't interest me), my background thought was "That's unusual and pretty creative for Apple & Apple Maps", so I read the title again and realized it was Google Maps - and everything suddenly made sense
 
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ThisBougieLife said:
As a lover of maps, I'm always glad to see more ways we can contribute to their improvement. I reported an error on Google Maps and they changed it fairly quickly. (They had labeled a local road "Cherry Ave." instead of "Cherry St." I hope someone got fired for that blunder). :p
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I reported *a mistake for more than a year (over and over again), still not fixed.

*I moved to this Apartment 3 years ago, found out quickly that my and 13 other apartments in my block is wrongly pinned on the map, many delivery employees use Google maps so they almost always have to call, the ones that use other map apps have no such issues.
Some of them were also wrong, after reporting the mistake they updated their mapping quickly....not Google though.

As for the article, I have little trust in any of Googles (mapping) tools.
 
And nobody here seems to know OpenStreetMap which is wholly build on the idea of crowdsourcing. Plus the gathered data is under an open license which means everybody can use this data and not just one big company (Google in this case) is taking advantage of all the crowdsourcing work.
 
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Good feature, to be sure, and I would LOVE to see Apple add something similar. I certainly already use Apple's report problems tool, but with misplaced or inaccurate roads it's a lot harder to get corrections done than updating the location of a business or something.

Interestingly, though, Apple at least used to have a backdoor version of this feature:

Because Apple Maps pulled some data from OpenStreetMap, which is entirely user contributed, you could edit that and the edits would usually eventually show up in Apple Maps.

Several years ago I tested this out with a backwoods neighborhood near where I live that, in trying to find someone's house, I discovered that both Google Maps and Apple Maps were a total mess--street names were on the wrong streets and roads were the wrong shape, in the wrong place, or missing entirely. It was past the point you could just report an error, since the whole neighborhood was broken.

Out of annoyance and curiosity, I carefully added, edited, and labeled everything in OpenStreetMap (even did a GPS trace for a road that wasn't visible through the trees), and indeed, some while later (months, if memory serves) Apple Maps finally started showing everything correctly. Google at the time at least was still completely wrong.

Would have been great to have been able to just draw it right and hand it to Apple!
 
Collaboration on mapping is way over do. People know where they live and this is the fastest way to correct errors.
 
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I think the one issue is that people who's job it is to make these maps are having their job done for free by volunteers. They're improving their products with free labor.

Most people probably won't see that as an issue, and I'm not even really sure it's an issue though. 🤷🏽‍♂️
 
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